by Neil Woods
One of this gang motioned Angus and me to follow, and led us into the toilets. My heart beat faster as I recognised Jackson.
We followed Jackson into the men’s room. The five other geezers who had been sitting at his table trooped in after us, and I was quickly surrounded by these five huge guys, in their matching black jackets, leering down at me.
‘Who the fuck is dis then?’ barked Jackson.
As if on cue, the five bruisers immediately started walking a tight circle around me, closing me in.
‘It’s Woody man… he’s cool, he’s been around here for ages,’ Angus stammered from the corner, using the ironic nickname I had chosen for this operation.
Then Jackson turned to me and shouted, ‘Who’s his fucking bird then?’
‘It’s Sara, I’ve known them ages.’ I tried to keep my voice low and humble. ‘I just wanted—’
BANG. One of the guys circling me lashed out. The headbutt wasn’t hard enough to knock me down, but it sent me staggering to the side, only to be pushed straight back into the centre of the circle.
‘Where he live, then?’ barked Jackson.
‘Out in Kettering,’ I cried back, in a rising panic.
BANG. BANG. Another headbutt, followed by a hard shoulder-slam into my back. I reeled one way, then another.
‘Who you fuckin’ score your tings off?’
‘Uhh… I know Mike from Abington… and Jamie from down St. Crispin—’
BANG. BANG – BANG. BANG.
I was cut off by another rain of blows, coming in from all directions as they continued to pace their tight circle around me.
BANG. BANG. BANG. The shoves and headbutts kept coming, harder and more violent.
‘I know Ellie, the working girl from Bridge Street,’ I cried in desperation, feeling immediately guilty for endangering her by dropping her name – but by this point I was frantic.
‘Yeah, all right,’ Jackson growled.
And with that one phrase, the guys stopped circling. Without a word they trooped back out the door.
Jackson loomed over me. ‘What you want, den?’
‘Uhh… just a one and one,’ I stammered.
‘Yeah, all right.’ He reached into his pocket and held out a rock of crack and a wrap of heroin.
‘Gimme the money, gimme the fuckin’ money,’ he snarled, and snatched the twenty quid out of my hand.
Then he got close, right in my face, his voice dropping to an exaggerated growl, ‘You talk to the pigs – we kill you. You talk to some other cunt that talks to the pigs – we fucking kill you. You fuckin’ get it, bruv?’
I just nodded.
Jackson turned to Angus, still standing in the corner. ‘Give him the fucking number.’
As we walked out of the snooker club Angus turned to me. ‘Don’t fuck about with them lot – they’re wrong’uns, mate… They’re just fucking wrong.’
I knew Angus wasn’t speaking for my benefit. Any infraction I committed against the Burgers would rebound onto him and Sara. I made a promise to myself that I would do everything in my power to protect them from any repercussions.
But I was soon to find out just how wrong the Burger Bar Boys could really be.
I tried the number Angus gave me, and was told to go to an isolated spot near the Racecourse, a scraggy bit of parkland that had become an open-air shooting gallery for the city’s junkies.
A black car with tinted windows rolled up. Out stepped Jackson’s second-in-command, a huge bruiser who everyone just called D, along with another geezer in a black jacket. acting as bodyguard.
D gruffly sold me a two and one – two bags of heroin and one of crack. Then, just as I was handing over the money, he grabbed me by the collar and violently yanked me forward. ‘Don’t fuck with dis,’ he brayed in my face.
I just nodded, trying to communicate utter subservience. He pushed me roughly and I staggered back. ‘I mean it. Don’t fuck with dis, bruv,’ he snarled again. Then he very deliberately lifted the bottom of his jacket.
There it was: the black chrome handle of a US police standard issue Glock 9mm. I took another step back, keeping my eyes on the ground and raising my hands to my chest, palms out in a gesture of total surrender. D just smirked with a venomous mix of malice and contempt and slid back into the car.
Of course I didn’t write up the handgun in my evidence book. By now we all knew how the system worked.
I had to give the Burger Bar Boys credit though. Their crack came back from the lab 92% pure, and their heroin around 60%. This was by far the best product any of us had ever encountered. To be shifting gear like that meant they had to be plugged into some major international networks.
But in addition to targeting the Burgers, I was trying to build a broad picture of how the entire drug scene functioned in Northampton. That meant carefully and patiently maintaining my network of underworld junkie contacts.
This led to problems with Gino. He wanted results fast; and his gung-ho attitude only got worse if he had had a pint or two with lunch.
I would do an afternoon score and call in for a pick-up, only to have him order me to stay out and make another buy that evening. I tried to explain that this was unrealistic behaviour – a junkie would do his shot, then need several hours to ride out the high, then beg or steal enough money for the next fix. If I charged around making several scores a day from different dealers, I might as well print myself a T-shirt saying ‘Undercover Cop’.
It got to the point where one afternoon I got into the car, only to have him snap, ‘No, no – we’re not leaving yet. I want us to do another buy. We’re going to get an evening one today.’
I could smell the beer on him, and even wondered for a moment if he was fit to drive. ‘Gino, listen mate, it’s not the right move. I’ve been out all day, trust me – I know the situation.’
‘No, you listen, Neil!’ he shouted in pent-up frustration, ‘you don’t know everything, yeah. I’m telling you we need another bloody buy today.’
This just wasn’t worth the hassle.
I got back out of the car and stood on the pavement, pretending to punch a number into my mobile. I held it to my ear and counted off fifteen seconds before giving Gino a fatalistic shrug. ‘Nah man – gone to voicemail – nothing to be done.’ Gino bought it, but the entire way back to headquarters I couldn’t stop thinking that I shouldn’t have to be pretending to make calls just to get my own Cover Officer off my back. This was simply not how an operation should be run.
The Burger Bar Boys had one mobile number they shared between them – a tactic to frustrate efforts to gather evidence on any specific gang member. Every time a different voice would pick up with, ‘All right Woody,’ and I would receive instructions about where to make the deal.
I always dreaded it when D answered. Scoring from the Burgers always meant some form of unpleasantness, but he was by far the worst. This particular evening he had a particular edge in his voice as he ordered me to come all the way across town.
He didn’t pull up in his usual sports car, but in a large minivan, along with four guys I’d never seen before.
D started walking around me, like a military sergeant doing an inspection. Then he turned to one of the other guys and grunted, ‘What you think then?’
Without a moment’s hesitation the guy immediately yelped back, ‘I reckon he’s fucking Five-O.’
The rest of the group immediately exploded into shouts of ‘Yeah, he’s fucking Five-O, bro… fucking do him, bro… just fucking kill him now, bro.’
D stepped back to his group. He then reached round his back, and out came the Glock. He stood, arms crossed, slowly tapping the gun against his left shoulder. ‘Take off your shirt.’
I carefully removed my torn jacket and charity shop jumper, and stood there shivering and thanking God I wasn’t wearing a wire.
‘Fuckin’ do him… Just fuckin’ shoot him, bro,’ the gang brayed like a pack of hyenas.
D looked on, impassive. ‘Your pants
,’ he commanded.
I slid my trousers down to my ankles. ‘I said your fucking pants,’ snarled D. The gang went suddenly quiet.
My underwear followed my trousers down round my shins. Now the hyenas exploded in laughter. ‘Look at de little white boy… ’rah mate, look at dat, he actually fuckin’ did it ’n all.’
Now I was getting annoyed. I’ve never had any problems in that department, and I needed to let D know that even as a junkie, there was only so far he could push. ‘Yeah, all right, it’s fucking cold, y’know.’
The gang seemed to respond to that expression of male defensiveness – maybe they could relate. ‘Ah, put yourself away, man,’ sneered D, obviously satisfied I wasn’t wired up. I hurriedly threw my clothes back on and proceeded to buy three bags of heroin and two of crack, making myself a mental promise that I would take this fucker down.
All across my Northampton addict network things were in crisis.
George died of a heroin overdose. His boyfriend Ned woke up to find his lover’s body lying on the floor of their squat, blue and cold, the needle still stuck in his arm.
Ned called the emergency services in an anguished panic, and was promptly arrested for possession with intent to supply. He was twenty-two years old. He and George had run away from home to be together, and now he was trapped in the justice system, utterly alone.
There was nothing I could do. I heard the story on the junkie grapevine as it was passed from street corner to street corner. I immediately rushed back to HQ to see if there might be any leeway. Ned was no dealer, but Northampton police were looking to nail him as having supplied George with the skag that killed him. It was a disgrace. But the EMSOU brass were clear; they couldn’t be seen to be meddling in Northamptonshire Constabulary affairs.
A week later, Ellie got battered by her pimp. She turned up to score with a split lip, and appalling yellow-purple bruises darkening each eye.
‘Fucking Christ Ellie, what happened?’ I gasped in shock.
‘Just someone being a prick,’ she answered fatalistically.
‘Yeah but I mean… did you tell anyone?’
‘Woody, who the fuck am I going to tell?’ She seemed surprised at my naïveté.
‘Am I supposed to go to the cops and say my junkie pimp beat me and raped me? What the fuck do you think will happen? They’ll arrest me and then he’ll cut my face up when he finds out.’
She grimaced in pain, and put her head in her hands. ‘What the fuck… let’s just score, yeah? I fucking need something right now.’
I let her keep almost the entire bag, keeping only the bare minimum I needed to present as evidence to Gino. But I was crushed. I had already, of course, begun to feel deep misgivings about the way the War on Drugs was being fought, but Ellie’s complete and automatic distrust of the police spun me round.
How had the system become so twisted that instead of protecting people like Ellie or Ned and George, they were forced to live outside it? They weren’t just terrified of their own dealers, but also of the police – the very people they should have been able to turn to for protection. All I could see around me was our own tactics being used against us while we busted vulnerable people on meaningless charges.
‘Woody, hey Woody,’ a voice called from behind me.
I spun round to see Joni, my Big Issue seller friend, in her usual Kill Bill-yellow tracksuit.
‘Fuck, are you all right?’ she gasped.
I was playing rattling that day – like a junkie in serious need. I’d made my eyes red and watery, I was walking with a cramped stoop and had quickened my breath into a shallow rasp. From Joni’s reaction, I guess my act was working.
‘All right Uma?’ I put an extra little tremble into my voice and used her street nickname. ‘You don’t fancy getting a bag do you?’
‘Ah I can’t, love, I’ve got to sell the magazines.’ She looked at me sympathetically. ‘But you’re really hurting aren’t you?’
Without waiting for an answer she held out a five-pound note. ‘Here, sort yourself out. I’ll be fine selling these, you look like you could use some help.’
Joni needed that fiver. She had a serious habit; in a few hours she’d be rattling herself. But she believed I was in trouble at that moment, and needed the money more. By the standards of the civilian world it was a tiny gesture, but for a penniless addict it was an immeasurable, profound act of kindness.
What could I do? I didn’t want to take her cash. I was pretending to rattle for effect – Joni used heroin to self-medicate for her horrific childhood. But no junkie in history has ever turned down free money.
As I walked away with the fiver in my pocket I almost burst into tears. Maybe I was vulnerable and strung out, but the fact that this junkie – considered the lowest of the low by the rest of society – would perform such a massive act of compassion made me question everything I was here to do. Why was this person considered a criminal? Why couldn’t she turn to the system for help? There was nothing morally wrong with her, so why was she considered beyond society’s pale?
I still needed to take the Burger Bar Boys down – there was no doubt about the pain they caused. There was still a battle to fight, and I was still a soldier. But as I crept along the streets of Northampton in my worn-out trainers and torn jeans, I was forced to ask myself once again if we were even fighting the right war at all.
It’s a four-hour drive between Northampton and Buxton. As the operation dragged on, I began stopping over more and more often out of sheer exhaustion.
As a reward for good work – and an incentive for more – Max and Gino started booking me into a posh hotel outside the city. The place had a five-star restaurant, armour on the walls and gold-plated taps in the bathroom. But I never felt right there.
I would come in straight from the job and have to walk through that fancy lobby still in my trackies and baseball cap – still inhabiting my street personality. I could feel the eyes of the other guests burning through me. I shouldn’t be here. I didn’t belong. Those nights were spent anxiously turning in the embroidered Egyptian cotton sheets, wondering what the hell I was doing there.
It was on about my fifth stay there that I cracked. I had spent most of the day chasing a crack-addled user-dealer around derelict Northampton council estates with Ellie, the bruises from her attack still vivid on her face. Now I was sitting on my own in one of the fanciest restaurants in the Midlands, listening to ‘tasteful’ piano jazz while chubby executives tried to impress identikit skinny blondes in too much make-up.
My food arrived. I stared down at the glistening veal chops, smothered in some sort of redcurrant gravy, and thought back to the empty Pot Noodle cartons, used needles and burned-up sheets of tinfoil that littered Ellie’s flat.
I looked around the restaurant again. The soft pink of the meat in front of me perfectly matched the pink in the artsy photographs of African sunsets hanging on the walls. I cut into a chop, raised a morsel to my mouth, then put it back down and pushed the plate away in disgust.
I walked to the bar and ordered a double Scotch. Two more quickly followed. Why not? EMSOU were paying.
Even here I couldn’t find any peace. The drinks were all served with little individual napkins under them. What was the point of that? What was the fucking point of all this useless shit when a woman like Ellie was beaten and raped, but couldn’t turn to the police for help? What was the point when every tactic we used to catch gangsters was turned back round against the people we should be protecting?
‘Can I get you anything else, sir?’ asked the kindly old bartender.
‘Sir?’ I laughed in disgust. ‘Who the fuck are you calling sir? I’m not your sir. I’m not your fucking sir!’
I realised I was shouting.
I swivelled on my barstool. The entire room had gone silent, staring at me in open-mouthed horror. What was happening? This wasn’t me speaking, this was some unhinged council-estate street junkie.
‘I’m… I’m sorry,’ I whispered to
the bartender, then slid off my stool and staggered out.
That night I slept in my tracksuit on the hotel room floor.
The next day Gino picked me up for my morning deployment. ‘Don’t ever put me there again,’ I said, the second I got into the car.
‘You what?’ he blustered.
‘Just don’t put me in that hotel. I can’t hack it there. Find somewhere as simple as possible, or I’d rather just sleep on the couch at HQ.’
Gino went into a sour little sulk for the whole journey back into town, but at this stage I didn’t have the energy to manage his mood swings. I just didn’t ever want to see that hotel again. The chasm between that and my life on the streets was just too wide, the disconnect too much for me to handle.
But as conflicted as I had felt at that hotel, nothing was as bad as actually having to go home.
Whenever I walked into our once cosy family home I’d feel like I’d stepped straight into a sullen, hostile war zone. Sam become unrecognisable to me, and the acrimony and shouting sessions were escalating.
My affair with Meghan had ended. She had met someone else, and I had no right to hold her back. So I needed a new form of solace. I wasn’t an alcoholic – I dealt with addicts every day of my professional life – I know what that looks like. But, once you start using booze as a coping mechanism, there’s only one way it can go – and it never ends well.
There had been a rape. Someone had defaulted on a crack debt and their girlfriend had paid the price. Nothing was officially reported – sexual assaults rarely are, particularly when the perpetrators are ruthless gangsters – but we had received urgent intelligence that the previous evening five of the Burger Bar Boys had thrown a woman in the boot of a car, driven to the outskirts of the city and each raped her in turn.
Max, our DI, was an extremely dedicated, ethically serious police officer. To him, doing service to a rape survivor took precedence over all other operational concerns. Our mission here as he saw it was to act ahead of the game, to gather whatever evidence we could, just in case anyone was to come forward in future.
‘Woodsy, we need you to get yourself into a car with the Burgers today. There’s a chance – a slim chance, but a chance – that whatever car they’re driving today is the same one they were using last night. We’ll organise an immediate pick-up for your clothes afterwards – you may well be covered in DNA evidence.’