by Wilson, Jim
The operation was first uncovered when French police stopped a van load of Stella Artois cans in transit. An officer opened one of the cans and became suspicious when the lager did not fizz. He ordered the cargo to be opened and the drugs stash was exposed. Carbin’s gangster pals would enjoy Spanish holidays before driving the vans back to Glasgow for £1,000. Speaking from behind the bars of Alhaurín de la Torre prison, near Malaga, in January 1995, Carbin said, ‘I have admitted the lot. It was my operation.’
He left Alhaurín de la Torre jail in a black Mercedes after being released in 1998, having served two thirds of his six-year sentence. He was then charged with dealing heroin during his time behind bars and fled to Scotland while on bail. After strolling through Customs at Edinburgh Airport, wearing the ‘Bad Boy’ T-shirt, the fugitive went into hiding. He came home to Scotland for the last time with nothing but a heroin habit – an addiction that was to lead to his death from the flesh-eating bug, necrotising fasciitis, in December 2003.
By then his son, who shared his father’s facial features and build, had followed him into the family business of international drug smuggling. Carbin Snr may have been unable to show his boy the ropes but, in his stepfather Jamie Stevenson, he had an equally capable mentor.
14
It’s War
The phone call from Liverpool was short and to the point. ‘We don’t give a fuck whose fault it is. We want our money. He used your name so it is your problem.’
For Jamie Stevenson it was a very big problem. One of his trusted Merseyside wholesalers was owed £80,000 for a consignment of cocaine. The person who had taken delivery was Tommy McGovern but he was refusing to pay. Tommy had got the drugs on credit by using Stevenson’s name as a reference. Therefore, it was Stevenson who had to come up with the cash – or deal with the defaulter.
A former family associate said:
It was a contact of Stevenson’s but Tommy just decided to blank it. He had it on tick but wasn’t going to pay. The Liverpool boys were not happy and it was up to Stevenson and Tony to get it sorted. There was a big fall-out and they both went up against Tommy. The only way to sort it would be to kill Tommy but Tony could not cross that line. The family would never have agreed to that.
If you bump your supplier, you must be seen to be doing something about it. If you don’t, then the English boys will take it up with you.
Long-running brotherly squabbles between Tony and Tommy, separated in age by only two years, had long been a feature of the McGovern household but this sibling rivalry was about to reach a new low. Tony and Stevenson had begun to do more side deals of their own. Tommy resented being cut out. He was often called upon to do the dirty work but increasingly suspected that he was not getting his fair share of the money.
The McGovern mob bought large quantities of heroin, coke, cannabis, Ecstasy and speed, mainly from Liverpool, sometimes London and occasionally directly from Europe. This was cut and distributed – tenner bags to junkies, pills to clubbers, dope to students and coke to the professionals. The profits were fantastic so to squabble over one batch of coke was just stupid. Tommy’s non-payment was seen by Stevenson and Tony as a deliberate act of provocation and neither was the type of person to back down. It was war but, in this particular conflict, one of the generals was to change sides in mid battle.
In the early summer of 1998, the opening salvo, however, was directed at Tommy after Tony and Stevenson were blamed for Tommy being run over by an ice-cream van and suffering leg injuries. Later that month when Tony was best man at Stevenson’s wedding, Tommy did not even get a bit of wedding cake, let alone an invitation.
Throughout that summer, police received intelligence of other minor skirmishes between the sides and, when they arrested Tommy for attempted murder, possession of firearms and perverting the course of justice, it neatly put a lid on the brotherly battle. His conviction also pleased the police for other reasons – they had been infuriated at the witness intimidation that had seen Tommy’s 1995 trial for murder collapse.
Tommy was sentenced to four years in prison at the High Court in Greenock for the various charges in March 1999, although the attempted murder charge had by then been reduced to assault. With Tommy out of the way, Tony and Stevenson could get on with business without distraction and were able to appease the Liverpool contact. Meanwhile, Tommy had time to plot his next move following his eventual release from his cell in the newly built private prison in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire.
It was during his time behind bars that the McGovern family intervened in the dispute. With so many genuine enemies, they could not afford to fight amongst themselves. Eldest brother Joe is credited with forcing Tony and Tommy to form a peace pact but Tommy could only accept this deal on one condition – Stevenson must be killed.
It will never be known when Tony made the conscious decision to sacrifice his best friend for the sake of peace with his brother, in effect signing his friend’s death warrant, but, by early 2000, the bonds of friendship had lost out to family loyalty. Blood was, after all, thicker than water.
For those in the police and the underworld tracking the feud, a High Court case in March 2000 revealed exactly how the McGoverns would use any means necessary to score points.
Joseph Carbin, a relative of Gerry Snr and Jnr, who stands at six foot four, was sentenced to nine years for a knife attack on five-foot-tall John Callaghan, a cousin of the second-division Lyons crime family. As Carbin, fuelled by alcohol and drugs, stood over his victim holding two razor-sharp boning knives above his head, he told Callaghan, ‘Your lungs are getting it.’ It was no idle threat. Carbin plunged the blades into Callaghan thirteen times, leaving him disabled. It was a miracle that Carbin was not facing a murder charge.
What seemed most relevant to those monitoring the feud between the McGoverns and Stevenson was that Callaghan co-operated with police and, had Carbin not pleaded guilty, he would have been willing to give evidence against him. It was widely held that the McGoverns sanctioned their associate Callaghan to do so. The reason? Stevenson was married to Gerry Carbin’s ex-wife and he had a good relationship with his stepson Gerry Jnr. This meant that Stevenson and Joseph Carbin were natural allies which, in turn, meant Carbin became an enemy of the McGoverns. Callaghan’s co-operation helped to land Carbin in jail for nine years.
A court observer said:
It was strange that Callaghan would co-operate and the reason for that was because the McGoverns had sanctioned it because the feud with Stevenson had begun and this was a member of the Carbin family. Had this happened a year earlier, it would never have resulted in a conviction. It’s a trick that’s been used by various groups – they will encourage and protect other people to give evidence in order to put a rival away while they are not being personally seen as grasses.
The play in court was only one weapon in the gangland foes’ armoury, however, and there were far less subtle mechanisms for securing success. On the afternoon of Friday, 30 June, Tony McGovern was showering in his comfortable house in Bishopbriggs – the type of house that the pickpocket victims of his youth might have lived in – when someone walked in and shot him. The gunman, who had entered through the unlocked back door, fired at least twice, possibly three times, in the steamy tile-lined bathroom, shattering the glass shower cubicle door. At least one shot hit Tony before he ran, injured, naked and shouting, into the street.
The gangland figure was rushed to hospital but his injuries were not life threatening. Police were quick to suspect Stevenson. Tony refused to co-operate with detectives but forensic experts recovered some of the rounds used in the shooting. The ammunition was of poor quality. Investigators believed the bullets were home-made and had probably been fired from a converted replica firearm. The amateurish ammunition suggested that whoever shot Tony either lacked the contacts capable of supplying a better gun or was in a hurry and had grabbed whatever weapon was immediately at hand.
One newspaper the following day devoted fifty-six words to the inciden
t but mistakenly reported that Tommy McGovern, rather than Tony, was the shooting victim who was recovering in hospital.
One detective who worked on the case said:
I got a call on the day after the shooting from a contact who supplied the full details about the fall-out between Stevenson and Tony. I reported this information to a detective inspector but he was not that interested. It was not until the following Monday morning when an assistant chief constable found out that it was taken seriously. The ACC realised that this was an ongoing vendetta which had the potential to become a lot more serious.
In the months that followed, there was more tit-for-tat violence. In the early hours of one Sunday in July, Cafe Cini in Greenock was torched. Just one year after its glitzy gangland opening, hundreds of people were having to flee from the McGovern-controlled style bar. All that remained as morning broke was a smouldering shell. Police warned staff to be prepared for similar attacks at other pubs in the Jimmy Nick’s chain. CCTV images showed the culprit to be a man who appeared to be of the same height and build as Stevenson but there was never enough evidence to make an arrest. The McGovern family did not require the same standard of proof – they knew who was behind the attack.
The escalating feud widened. Stevenson is devoted to his stepson Carbin who, at the time Tony was shot, was aged twenty-one. In the same year, a member of the McGovern crew brandished a gun in Stevenson’s stepson’s face at the Ashfield Club – the same venue in Possil where taxi driver Jimmy McHugh had been shot dead in 1995.
Following Tony’s eventual murder, one frustrated detective said:
There was an incident at the Ashfield Club. There was allegedly a firearm present. It’s a matter that still has to be resolved. Police were called to an incident at the time but we don’t have an official complaint. I’m aware that the person involved is the stepson of Jamie Stevenson. As to whatever exactly happened, I don’t know. There were few witnesses. It’s amazing how many people can get into a pub toilet at one time.
By the time Tommy stepped through the prison gates to freedom on 9 August, he finally understood the consequences of his refusal to pay his Liverpudlian drug debt. His stunt had propelled his family into all-out war. The most crucial act in this long hot summer of spiralling violence happened just days before Tony was shot at while in the shower. Indeed, it had been the catalyst for the attack.
Just four weeks before Tommy headed back to Springburn, Stevenson was persuaded to go for a drive in the country. He was not meant to return.
15
In the Jungle
It’s called Tak-Ma-Doon Road but the only thing about to be taken down that night was Jamie Stevenson. He had been told it was to be a meet, a drive north out of Glasgow to a secluded spot to discuss business with a trusted contact. It was July 2000 and the rendezvous was agreed in a bid to end his war with the McGoverns. He knew his companions and felt no need to go armed. It was almost a fatal mistake. Who, he thought, would try to kill you at a peace summit?
Leaving the north of the city through darkened back roads, the car headed into the countryside behind Kilsyth and parked up near a reservoir. Then a handgun was suddenly pulled, aimed and fired straight at Stevenson’s head. He tells people that the pistol jammed in the steady hand of the would-be assassin. Friends of those in the car that night say that a shot was fired but it merely burned their intended victim’s neck. They insist the injury was bad enough to later need hospital treatment but admit it was never life threatening.
Stevenson was shocked. Fight or flight? In a split-second, his human instinct for self-preservation to flee prevailed over a bare-handed attack on two men, one of whom was armed. He tumbled out of the car door, rolled over and then was back on his feet. Over a fence and into a field, he was running, the adrenaline thundering through his body. His would-be assassins followed him but lost him in the darkness.
After stumbling across the boggy fields of this unfamiliar rural Stirlingshire terrain, Stevenson eventually came to the house of a businessman acquaintance, a Glasgow publican. Entering the garden from the rear, he knew he had found a temporary haven but realised there would be no permanent safety until he had dealt with those who had tried to kill him – the McGoverns.
One of the men in the car that night was allegedly Terry Monaghan, an ‘elder statesman’ of Glasgow gangland and a man who had the authority and the trust to broker a potential deal between the McGoverns and their nemesis – in particular, he could do a deal that might save face on both sides and stop the war escalating to the stage where it would begin to hurt business.
Monaghan, however, is reluctant to go into exact details about the night when, allegedly, he, Stevenson and a third man, who is now in prison, went for a drive in the country. Perhaps he hoped that, having so much to deal with, Stevenson’s memory has begun to fade. When tracked down, Monaghan asked:
Is this anything to with a gun? Is it something to do with him getting shot in the back of the head? I wonder what happened there. I know that it was when Wimbledon was on. The police know about it – they’ll tell you. He had to go to hospital – it was a private hospital. Everyone can speculate and the dogs in the street seem to know that it is me.
A Monaghan ex-associate said:
After this happened, Terry was very worried about repercussions. Stevenson obviously trusted him enough to get into a car unarmed and head out the back roads while in the middle of a war with the McGoverns – not the kind of mistake you’d make twice.
Ironically, nine years earlier, Terry’s brother Abie, a promising footballer who, as a boy, had played alongside the legendary Kenny Dalglish, had been caught outside the Highland Fling with a samurai sword, as he was preparing to chop the head off one of the McGoverns.
A Stevenson associate said:
Jamie was not injured and he was not armed. If he had been, things would have been different. For years they ran together and worked together and Tony had been a proper friend, a china. Tony knew that Tommy was a loose canon but Stevenson knew that, if it ever came to the crunch, Tony would always side with his brothers. Even before the fall-out over Tommy bumping his Liverpool contacts for money, Stevenson had been growing apart from them.
Pushing his hands forward like train lines, he added:
Up until the late 1990s, they had worked together like that but there had been a gradual moving away even before this. Stevenson understood that the McGoverns would hold him back. They were liberty-takers – slashing people, stabbing people. Tommy was snorting most of their profits. The youngest brother Paul was about to come out of jail after doing his time for murdering the janitor and he would be looking for a piece of the action.
It might just have worked itself out if they hadn’t tried to kill Stevenson first but, after that, there was no going back. Stevenson felt bad about it but he knew it was him or them and he was not about to let it be him. It was both business and personal.
Stevenson felt bad about Tony and, after he died, he just said, ‘If you walk in the jungle, you had better be ready to bump into a tiger.’
Stevenson had been shocked by the attempt on his life. In the nights that followed, he admitted as much to one criminal associate at The Tunnel club in Glasgow, a venue where he and Tony had spent many happy times together.
Another close friend said:
He could not believe it when they tried to kill him out on the back roads. For several nights, he talked about it and he had tears in his eyes. At first, he didn’t know what to do but quickly realised there was only one course of action he could take. A few days later, Tony was shot in the shower.
Many in the police were already certain that one side or the other would suffer a fatality. Stevenson was undoubtedly dangerous but most observers thought that the McGovern brothers would ultimately triumph in this most brutal test of strength – after all, Stevenson was just one man. They thought wrong.
Tony was shot dead on the evening of 16 September 2000 while he was sitting at the wheel of his black A
udi A6 which was parked outside the New Morven. It would be one of the most significant gangland murders for years and one that signalled an audacious gangland putsch.
In the days after McGovern was murdered, Stevenson trailed other members of the McGovern family, including the brothers and their parents, covertly taking their pictures. They were soon sent the photos in the post.
The associate recalls:
The McGoverns wanted revenge. They would have been baying for Stevenson’s blood but sometimes self-preservation comes before anything else. And, when they got those pictures, they got the message very quickly. They were feared but not respected and suddenly somebody wasn’t scared of them or what they might do. Stevenson took the war right into their backyard, into their heartlands, and away goals count double.
Another north Glasgow underworld figure said:
After Stevenson did what he did, the whole perception of the McGoverns changed. They were running about like headless chickens offering people money to do things for them but people asked why could they not do it themselves. Their reputation was in tatters, this entire facade of invincibility just melted away like ice.
Their plan had spectacularly backfired. In the countryside north of Glasgow, the damp shallow grave that lay open in readiness for Stevenson’s warm corpse would remain unfilled.
16
Vengeance
Big Duncan McIntyre asked the barmaid for another large vodka before scrutinising his palm for a coin to feed into the Thomson’s bar jukebox. McIntyre, a long-standing McGovern henchman, was mourning his good friend Tony.