Druglord

by Graham Johnson

  Seconds before Heath had left the dock offices on his motorbike, Haase had been observed with him. A police surveillance team had followed Heath’s motorbike to the Atlantic Café in Walter Street, north Liverpool, where he drew up next to a gold Renault Laguna. The Renault had been driven down from Scotland to Liverpool by 46-year-old Walter Kirkwood, a criminal from Dumbarton who worked for one of Scotland’s leading underworld figures. Both engines were still running when Heath lifted the black Head sports bag from his shoulder and threw it into the car.

  Kirkwood was followed towards the M6 motorway and intercepted at traffic lights near Kirkby by armed police. As evidence against Haase, the guns were excellent in every respect. But they didn’t arrest the Mr Big straight away. The police kept a low profile so that Haase would not be aware that they were closing in on him. When Kirkwood did not return to Scotland, both gangs did not seem to suspect that the police were involved until much later. Haase carried on committing crimes unaware.

  A lot of the gun-deal negotiations were on tape purporting to show that Barry was getting the guns on behalf of Bennett under duress. It was rumoured that Bennett was deliberately encouraging the Scottish gangs to kill each other so he could exploit the weakness to sell more drugs – as well as trying to stitch up Haase at the same time. In one conversation, Haase offers four guns for three grand as if he’s selling a second-hand car. In-between the negotiations, he casually talks about the Sunday League football team he sponsors.

  Haase: I’ve got four but I want three grand. The Mac Ten, that’s £2,300. The other one is a brand-new Magnum – that was two grand – and there’s a sawn-off as well. That’s with ammunition, though.

  Barry: That’s reasonable.

  Haase: Sawn-off . . . I might keep it myself. But they are boss, the Mac Tens. A machine gun has a manual [can be fired on manual single shot as well as automatic]. The Mac Ten’s not only got a single fire but rapid fire.

  Barry: What does he [Bennett] want to do? Start a war?

  Haase: They’re not for that. I’ll keep one of them. I don’t really need that many.

  Haase was not arrested on the day of the gun deal and didn’t realise that the Scottish courier had been nicked. So he kept on committing crimes as if there was nothing wrong. Busily, he set up a deal with his heroin supplier Salim to buy a kilo of heroin from London. He took Ken Darcy with him as a mule to carry the gear.

  Haase was arrested at Liverpool Lime Street train station on 25 October after returning from a trip to London. In a massive surveillance operation, officers had followed Haase and Darcy as they set out from Liverpool Lime Street earlier that day and kept close tabs on them using undercover officers disguised as ticket-booth operators, cleaners and even guards on the train.

  On arrival at Euston, Haase and Darcy jumped a black cab to a Turkish restaurant in Stoke Newington, north London. In the café, Haase met Salim. Haase had got Salim’s number from Kaya, who was still in prison. In a previous phone call, Salim had told Haase that one kilo of gear cost £18,000. During the handover in the café, Salim generously knocked £3,000 off the asking price there and then, telling Haase that it was now only £15,000. He gave the £3,000 back to Haase.

  Upon arrest back in Liverpool that afternoon, Haase had the £3,000 in cash, while in the lining of Darcy’s coat a plastic BHS bag was recovered containing a kilo of heroin – 984 grams, to be precise. It was the end of Haase. The Scottish notes Haase had were probably from the sale of guns to the Scottish Connection.

  KEN DARCY: He said he’d pay for my ticket and I was getting £200 when I returned. I was told to be at the Crown at 7 a.m. and I’d be picked up to go to Lime Street. But I was 45 minutes late because I went to a different Crown pub. He then gives me £200 in Scottish money. I run back to purchase my own first-class ticket.

  Over breakfast, he was talking about his business. He had two mobile telephones with him and made several calls. I didn’t really hear the conversations, except Haase saying, ‘I’ll call when I get there.’ May have dozed off. Talking about his Sunday League football team. Get in to Euston, we both get off, walk up the platform into the main area, following him because not sure where I was going. Haase puts the bag down and goes to use the phone. Green holdall. When he finishes the call, he walks off, I pick up the bag and follow him. We went to a cab rank downstairs. Waited a couple of minutes because there is a queue. We get into the taxi. Not sure whether he showed the cabbie a piece of paper with the destination or told him. In the taxi for roughly 20 minutes. No real discussion in the taxi. Haase eventually told the cabbie to pull over. There was a guy walking up and down the road. He paid for the taxi. JH said to me, ‘Don’t let him see me.’ I did not really pay much notice and we went into a café. It was quite scruffy. There was about seven people in there. Big guy asked me if I wanted a cup of tea. I said yes. We go to the back of the café – I follow JH. Brought the tea over in a glass with bits of wood so never drank it.

  I sat on the end of a table and JH on another about 5 ft away. He sat with the big chap. Another person appeared, about 50, well dressed. Him and JH seem to know each other. They shook hands, had a little laugh and joke and the three sat on a separate table and had a discussion. Seven- to ten-minute discussion. The two men got up and said, ‘Won’t be long,’ to JH and went off.

  They went out the front door and into a Mercedes car. Once they left, I said to JH, ‘What’s happening?’

  He said, ‘Only be 20 minutes and then we’re gone.’

  Still sat across from him. Still other people in the café. It was a Turkish café. About half an hour later, I got a bit suspicious because it was late. I was getting a bit restless waiting around. About 45 minutes later, the big guy returns. I could see out of the café onto the road and saw him get out of the Merc with a carrier bag. He walked across the road towards me in the café. He put this bag on the table, on JH’s table. JH said to me, ‘Kop for that,’ as I hold on to it whilst we are standing up getting ready to leave. We go outside, walk 50 yards to a minicab office and go to Euston. I think that whilst in the cab, I asked him what I had and he said, ‘Hooky money.’ I deemed that to be counterfeit money. I had no reason to believe otherwise. We get back to Euston and straight onto the train and it leaves. A few minutes later, we have tea and sandwiches and after that JH fell asleep most of the way.

  So we get in to Liverpool. He has his holdall. Train pulls up, everyone waiting to get off. JH gets off the train, starts walking up the platform. I help old lady with her bags off the train whilst JH goes off to his car. If I had knowledge as to the contents of the bag, then I would not have helped the old lady off the train. I would have left the train straight away to secure the package. JH told me that his car was parked in the Buzz nightclub car park. I assumed he would give me a lift home.

  As I then walk onto the platform to go towards the car, I am arrested.

  On 26 October 1999, Haase was arrested at his dock office at the Stanley Heritage Market. Firstly, he was charged with conspiring to supply heroin in relation to the kilo from the north London Turks. Then he was charged with a separate firearms offence related to the Smith & Wesson found on 7 September in Walter Kirkwood’s car.

  Police moved in on the rest of the gang. Drugs mule Ken Darcy was charged with drug offences. Paul Grimes’s son and Haase’s heavy Heath Grimes was also charged with firearms offences. Barry Oliver, who had allegedly been at Stanley Dock on the day of the gun transaction, was also charged with firearms offences. At the time of the offences, Oliver was on licence after being released early from prison in connection with manslaughter.

  During police interrogations, Haase and Darcy did not fold under questioning. As seasoned career criminals, they answered the majority of questions with ‘no comment’. On the other hand, scared Heath Grimes, the young father facing a long stretch, weakly tried to talk his way out of it but tied himself up in knots.

  Haase’s partner Paul Bennett was still technically a wanted man – a further complicatio
n in the already difficult case. There was a live warrant out for his arrest in connection with a £1 million cannabis importation tracked by Operation Octagon. Several defendants began to try to get themselves shorter sentences by plea bargaining after finding out the staggering level of secret intelligence against them. But Haase and Heath Grimes were in for a bigger shock when it dawned on them that the man secretly informing on them was Paul Grimes – a lifelong friend to one and father to the other.

  Haase first realised that Paul was the grass when, against all odds, police found a secret cache of guns hidden underneath a floorboard in the vast dock warehouse. It would have been impossible for the officers to find the guns during a routine search – they must have been taken to them by one of Haase’s close aides. Paul Grimes was the man who’d kept watch while Haase had stowed them away.

  Haase then started threatening to set his heavies on Paul Grimes. Grimes told his handlers that if the attack came, he would go after Haase, insisting that he was not scared and would stand up to him. His handlers had to calm him down.

  On one occasion, Heath had still not realised that his own dad had ‘thrown him in’. Pitifully, he asked his dad to stand surety on his bail. Astonishingly, Paul did so.

  On the drugs-related charge, Haase knew the evidence against him was not as strong. After all, the kilo of heroin had not been found on his person – Ken Darcy had been carrying it. Therefore, he decided that he would try to cut a cheeky yet feasible deal on a lesser charge, something like supplying the cash to buy the drugs but not exactly being involved in the illegal purchase – an obscure form of money-laundering.

  Haase felt confident on this score because, as he claimed in private to his co-d’s, the kilo wasn’t technically his anyway. Haase said that it was all the fault of Chris No-Neck, who had set up the deal after repeatedly badgering him for a kilo of brown in the run-up to the trip. He claimed he had first visited the Turks in London on Saturday, 23 October, two days before he was busted, to talk about other business. The kilo of heroin was a side issue, a favour for No-Neck.

  Haase said that it had been No-Neck’s job to arrange a courier to pick up the parcel, but because of a mix up in travel arrangements he was forced to travel down himself in order not to stand up the Turks. Haase never contemplated revealing the story about No-Neck to the police, but he decided early on that his case strategy would be never to plead guilty to possessing the heroin.

  While Haase and Heath were on remand together, Heath believed that Haase would go ‘belly up’ and ‘blow everybody up’. Some of the Scottish criminals connected to Walter Kirkwood threatened to beat Haase but he was saved when Heath stepped in. But then Haase turned on Heath. He suspected that Heath was going to change his plea to guilty. Heath had got a job as a barber in Strangeways cutting prisoners’ hair so they could talk. But Haase refused to discuss the case with Heath. Heath was so incensed that he threatened to break Haase’s jaw and that of the other co-defendant, Barry Oliver, who was protecting Haase.

  Meanwhile, Heath Grimes was facing a raft of extremely serious charges. However, his father, Paul, was not quick to help him. For a while, Paul visited Heath in prison and continued to pump him for information. Heath was open with him because he had not yet realised that his father was the grass. Paul’s ex-wife Christine – Heath’s mother – was not so gullible. She realised what was going on and accused Paul of the worst kind of treachery.

  At that point, Paul had a pang of compassion. He decided to make a desperate bid to save his son. He asked his Customs handlers if they would go easy on Heath if he turned grass as well. Both sides agreed, but Heath backed down at the last minute. He was too scared of Haase.

  PAUL GRIMES: At first, Heath decided to turn and he started passing information at a secret meeting at a hotel in Chester. He gave them some pretty useless info about Haase, such as the extortion Haase had put on the Blackpool ciggies fella and how he was abducted, and how Haase had cut the throat of a man in Norris Green over a security contract. But he also told them about leaks at police HQ that were getting back to Haase, a gun-runner who supplied Haase, the drive-by shooting at the Buzz club, Bennett offering to sell the cannabis from Operation Octagon, an armed robbery on a post office and a bank heist. The busies already knew a lot of this because I had told them, but at least it was a start. Later, Heath told me that Haase was involved in an attempted murder and that he had evidence on tape and in writing about this. I told him to tell the police. The police said they would put him and his family on the witness-protection programme and move them away from the north-west. But then, at the last minute, he lost his bottle, fearing a revenge attack by Haase. Haase had got wind of Heath’s plan and demanded a meet in the prison to keep him and all the other co-d’s in line. After that, I had to turn my back on Heath. On 14 September 2000, I told my handler that I didn’t care whether I ever saw Heath again. He was history.

  Part of the deal for allowing Heath a break was that I should help the police find the guns hidden in the dock, special fucking SWAT teams or not. It was largest building of its type in Europe. They’d been at it nearly eight days and found fuck all. So I took them to the spot. They found the gear. There was a Colt handgun and a magazine, a Brevett pistol and a mag, a sawn-off Parker-Hale 12-bore shotgun, 200 rounds of ammo and 25 shotgun cartridges. There weren’t as many shooters as I’d seen him put in there. Was like a fucking IRA cache at one stage, but he must have been selling bits over the months, getting rid and that.

  Everyone knew that Haase wouldn’t think twice about killing me, especially after he definitely found out I was a grass. They found out for sure only after I’d tried to persuade Heath to turn.

  Astonishingly, many of Haase’s guns seemed to originate from police depots. They were guns that had been seized by police in crimes in years gone by but inexplicably found their way back onto the black market – just like the weapons he had used in the gun plants to con Michael Howard. He was obviously still using the same source. Haase had been so meticulous in his deals that he even had the Polaroids from police records to show to potential buyers.

  Meanwhile, from his prison cell, Haase was already plotting to kill Grimes – not out of revenge, but to stop him appearing in court. The plan was more complicated than a straightforward assassination. Haase was desperate to find out exactly how much Grimes had told his Customs handlers. At that stage, Haase did not know about the bugging and the masses of intelligence that Customs had on him. What he did know was that if there was such data in existence, much of it would be inadmissible against him, especially without Grimes standing up in court to back it up.

  Haase’s grand plan was to try to negotiate a deal with the courts. He was a past master at plea bargaining. If he could pull off one moody sentencing deal, then he could pull off another. Haase was totally confident he could do it again. But first he needed to find out exactly how much Grimes had given his masters.

  Haase planned to kidnap Grimes, bundle him into a van, torture him to find out what he had told them, kill him and dump him. But the plan was called off at the last minute, according to the Fence, after Haase’s team realised Grimes had secret police protection.

  Time was running out. If Haase was going to do a deal, he would have to make soundings before the trial started. In a last-ditch attempt to find out who knew what, he tried the same trick with one of the Customs officers who had helped gather the evidence against him. The officer was photographed at his home and outside his office at the Customs HQ in Manchester’s Salford Quays, but the plot to kidnap a serving law-enforcement officer was called off after he proved too adept at dodging his pursuers.

  As the pre-trial legal manoeuvres gathered pace, Haase told his solicitor, Tony Nelson, to instruct his barrister, the eminent Lord Carlile of Berriew, to start talking to the prosecution. Nelson was the lawyer who had brokered the deal that had freed Haase from his previous, 18-year sentence. Seemingly, a loose agreement was reached without delay. The nub of the deal hinged on Haase
pleading guilty to lesser charges. In return for a cost-cutting guilty plea, the prosecution would throw their weight behind a plan to give Haase a shorter sentence. The jail term would be slashed because of mitigating circumstances. In short, Nelson believed that if everybody did what they said they were going to do, there was a good chance that Haase might get six years or less. This was not exactly ‘beating the case’, but it would be the best of a very bad situation. Nelson persuaded Haase that it was worth going for. In a letter to Lord Carlile, dated 5 December 2000, Nelson states:

  I have told our client [Haase] that you have very successfully persuaded the prosecution to agree to one substantive charge of selling firearms in relation to Indictment 1 on the following basis:

  a) That there was no harm to the public.

  b) That there was no terrorist link.

  c) That this was an isolated and ‘one off ’ event.

  The letter goes on to reveal that ‘if one takes into account all the mitigating features that you have agreed with the prosecution towards damage limitation’, then Haase could expect a sentence of between six and seven years. Furthermore, Nelson stated that this could be reduced to between four and five years if Haase pleaded guilty to the charge, saving the State the cost of a lengthy trial. Nelson continued:

  I heartily agree with you and did say, if you recall, spontaneously on the telephone that you could not have negotiated a more handsome basis of plea on behalf of your client, short of the prosecution withdrawing from the action.

  Intense plea bargaining also surrounded the second charge relating to the heroin deal. Lord Carlile was seemingly successful in having the indictment reduced to a money-laundering charge, reasoning that Haase would admit to putting up the money to purchase the heroin but not to conspiring to actually deal in the drugs. The amount of money said to be laundered, in addition, was reduced from £10,000 to £3,500. In the same letter, Nelson stated to Carlile: