For the police, the cases against Dylan, Paul Lowe and the rest had been a turning point, the first proof that the National Intelligence Model did what it said on the tin. It was the first big blow struck against the Cartel. Between them, Operation Kingsway and Operation Warren seized a total of £12 million worth of drugs and £306,000 in cash. The cases signalled the end of the wishy-washy 1990s, during which the Cartel had set the agenda and the police had followed behind. The dance era was dead, and police vowed never to allow drugs to take a grip on popular culture again. Around 93 kilos of heroin and 52 kilos of cocaine had been taken off the streets, all of it of extremely high purity. The loss of 10,000 Ecstasy tablets had caused a drought in local nightclubs.
To add insult to injury, and to the glee of police officers, the trial judge in Dylan’s case authorised the seizure of more than £5 million worth of assets from the gang. More than £500,000 in cash, houses, cars and jewellery were recovered straight away. For the new generation of officers like the Analyst, the case was evidence that the Major Crime Unit was the way forward. Detective Superintendent John Kerruish, who led the operation, said it had required a tremendous amount of Major Crime Unit manpower and resources, together with assistance from other forces and agencies. He said, ‘One syndicate of the MCU was dedicated to this inquiry for the best part of two years. You need to invest all these resources over a long period if you are to make any impact at all on organised crime groups.’
For many in law enforcement, it was a watershed moment. Rather than denying the existence of the Cartel, like the FBI had done with the Mafia in 1950s America, the officers spoke openly about its insidious effect. For the first time, the main target was being identified in public.
Kerruish added, ‘They are so sophisticated and they have their own organisation throughout the UK and abroad. They use all modern methods of communication.’
Almost immediately, the police decided to capitalise on their success and press on with their attack in the hope that a quick-fire succession of multiple blows would mortally wound the Cartel. This time, their target would be the next generation of rising stars. Danny Wall was only 21, but already he was a feared gangster whose violence had secured a wall of silence around him. Wall had fought his way upwards through Liverpool’s tough boxing network. Boxing was still a platform for organised crime, and Wall had been canny enough to make some powerful contacts in the Cartel.
By now, Wall was selling massive amounts of crack cocaine and heroin in an area called Speke, in the shadow of Liverpool’s John Lennon airport. Wall was in charge of a street-level distribution network. He bought in multiple-kilo amounts from Colin Smith. The power dynamic was simple. Within the hierarchy, Smith was the senior because he was a trafficker and Wall was a street seller. Smith made more money and accrued more status within the Cartel. Wall didn’t see why this status quo had to exist. After all, most of the hard work in the chain was done by the 50 or so dealers he employed and managed on the streets. Without their point-of-sale deliveries to the end user, Smith wouldn’t be able to realise his profits and power. Smith could bring in as many kilos as he liked, but he needed guys like Wall to shift them for him. Wall was determined to wrestle power from the likes of Smith and the other Cartel warlords. He wanted to topple the vertical structure, making it more horizontal. In that way, he’d get his just desserts.
Wall was a contemporary of Kallas, Sidious, Terry and Kaim. Though they weren’t close mates, they had the same contempt for the reputations of the Cartel bosses. Power grew out of the barrel of a gun. All big-time gangsters could be cut down to size, no matter how many millions they had.
On New Year’s Eve 2002, a violent dispute in Speke gave the police a long-awaited entry to Danny Wall’s world. As officers investigated the fight, they realised they’d walked into a crack and heroin business that had set up its base in the middle of a close-knit community. Speke was a traditional working-class community that had been ravaged by job cuts at the local docks. Though the Halewood Ford plant was still a big employer, the people on the estates now felt weakened. Residents were too scared to complain about the recent crime wave. Wall had started out as a small dealer, but his wares had turned the estate into a huge problem. The old-guard Cartel had tried not to involve ‘civilians’, but for the new generation of super hoodies, everyone was a potential victim.
Wall had handpicked several key players to sell on their own piece of turf. The cell system meant that each underboss was able to micromanage a few streets each. Nosey neighbours were terrorised into submission. Dealers were forbidden to fight with each other. The new generation had learned from the killing of David Ungi that violence only brought heat on them. The net result was that dealers were able to keep their activities quiet. From the outside, the area looked normal. The police said Wall’s operation was ‘relatively peaceful’. One resident said that Wall had ‘camouflaged’ his business to look like normal life.
Soon Danny Wall began to think that his network of 50 dealers was untouchable. He aimed to take over the region’s crack cocaine and heroin trade without handling the drugs himself. Again, detectives were reluctant to rely on informants. It was a good tactic. Most were too frightened to come forward. So they had to start gathering evidence on dozens of suspects across south Liverpool.
In May 2002, a team of police launched dawn raids on the homes of suspected crack and heroin dealers. Wall and 41 other dealers were put behind bars for a total of 122 years. Wall got seven years after detectives infiltrated his inner circle. It was two–nil to the police.
CHAPTER 45
URBAN TERRORISM
2003
RICHARD CASWELL WAS an unusual 21-year-old. Solemn. Soulless. Angry. He was a loner in the classic Lee Harvey Oswald mould, showing little or no empathy for his friends, never mind strangers. He had only threats and hatred for his enemies. He was consumed by his own warped beliefs and the petty disputes that they had fuelled.
But on the street corners and in the drug dens in Liverpool, Caswell’s personality was not unusual. Among the third generation of underclass urchins, he was typical. In fact, his type of outlook was seen as a means of survival.
As Caswell drove into Liverpool city centre on one Saturday night, on 20 September 2003, he stood out. His black K-reg Peugeot 103 was tatty, bought from a car auction for £500 cash a few days earlier. Among the black cabs and the Saturday night show-offs in their Porsche Cayennes, Benzies and Beamers, Caswell’s car looked out of place. The city centre was buzzing. Caswell weaved his way carefully through the throngs of wannabe WAGs and tourists enjoying the tail end of the summer. The weather wasn’t great: it was blustery, but the odd shower failed to dampen spirits. Thousands of Liverpool football fans had just got back from a victorious game at Leicester, and were streaming out of Lime Street station intent on enjoying a couple of pints before last orders.
But there was another reason Caswell slowed as he neared Lime Street station on the way to his final destination. Caswell’s car was a mobile bomb, packed with enough gunpowder and accelerants to cause the biggest explosion on mainland Britain since the fall of the IRA.
As usual, most of the clubbers were dressed for a night out. The girls were in their over-the-top trademark style, the look that would propel the WAG culture of Coleen Rooney, Alex Curran and Abbey Clancy into the tabloids and into the mainstream. Girls in bright colours and skimpy tops were queuing up to get into clubs before the prices went up after 11 o’clock. The lads were mostly in shirts. If the weather had been better, then hundreds more would have been queuing up. But the doormen were herding them in fast to get them out of the rain. Caswell stood out: he was dressed in his ‘all blacks’ – black jacket, black trackie top and black waterproof bottoms – topped off with a rolled-up balaclava.
Around 10 p.m., Caswell parked the car at the bottom of a hill called Mount Pleasant, near the nightclub where Shaun Smith ran the door. The club was owned by Jamie, the head of Shaun Smith’s family. Up until recently, Casw
ell had been employed as a bouncer there, serving loyally under Shaun. But like many of the third generation, Caswell couldn’t control his temper and was prone to fierce bouts of uncontrollable rage, which many put down to the fact that as kids they hadn’t been properly socialised. Jamie had sacked him in line with the stricter rules that were now coming in to clean up the security industry. Caswell was furious. How could they be so hypocritical, he seethed. On the one hand, they were fighting a vicious war with Kallas and Sidious and on the other sacking him for getting a bit uppity with one of the punters.
Over the days that followed, a black mindset overtook him. There was only one thing for it. He’d switch sides and line himself up with Kallas and Sidious. The young pretenders had recently formed an alliance with a hard core crime family that had gained entry into the Cartel. Kallas and Sidious saw the alliance as a gateway into the Cartel. And, once inside, they were going to turn it on its head.
The crime family had agreed that Caswell could come on board for the big win – as long as he proved his loyalty by carrying out a massive bomb attack on the nightclub. Their strategy was simple: to defeat Shaun Smith by deploying overwhelming firepower. Anyone else who stood in their way would get the same treatment, whether they were Cartel warlords, firms from Manchester or London – or even the police.
The police should have seen it coming. Over the past few months there had been a huge number of mysterious explosions across the city. At the last count, thirty-one telephone kiosks and eight postboxes had been blown up. A homemade nail bomb, known as a ‘pineapple’, had been thrown into the Dickie Lewis pub in Walton, a premises linked to Shaun Smith. In most cases, the key component was made up of super-strength industrial fireworks, imported from China, which had not long been available in the UK. The tubes contained high volumes of explosive-purity gunpowder. Sometimes the fireworks were wrapped in sheet metal or silver foil to create a compact improvised explosive device that could be lit by a thick protruding fuse. At other times, the mini bombs were packed into petrol containers and strapped to other cans containing fuel and shrapnel.
Some of the recent explosions had been no more than acts of vandalism. Others had been tests, the gang experimenting with what worked and what didn’t. The choice of targets – phone boxes – gave an insight into the people carrying out the test: they were only kids, who were usually smashing them up and writing graffiti on them, the next generation of creatures and urban terrorists.
Caswell claimed that he didn’t build the bombs. His job was simply to guide them to their target.
Shortly after 11 p.m. on 20 September, Caswell lit the fuse on the car bomb and fled into the night. A huge bang was followed by a fireball as the full tank of petrol went up. The blast shattered windows in nearby shops and offices. Hotel guests spilled out onto the street after being evacuated from nearby buildings. At the Mount Royal Hotel, glass from several windows was sent flying into rooms and onto the street. At the Regent Hotel, opposite the nightclub, the first police on the scene escorted stunned residents to safety. Miraculously, no one was hurt by the blast, mainly because the queues to get into the nightclubs had been unusually short. Police cordoned off the whole area. The investigation quickly revealed that the car had been bought from a vehicle auction at Newsham Park, an area near Anfield. Patrols were stepped up in the city centre. CCTV footage was carefully examined.
Shaun Smith said, ‘I went to see Jamie, the head of the family kind of thing. I said, “They’ve let a car bomb go off outside the club. I told you they were all dogs.” My take on it was simple: to wipe them all out, right here, right now.
‘But we still had the same old problem: we simply couldn’t find them. Once again, they melted into air, like ghosts. They went to ground.
‘One of the family, called Tyler, went and had a meeting with one of their dads. He told them: “One of them kids is going to end up in a body bag or in a wheelchair.”
‘That was that. That was all we could do until we could cop for one of them.’
But the hit-and-run attacks continued. Less than a month later, on 18 October, the gang mounted a second strike. A home-made bomb was hurled through a bedroom window and eight homes were damaged. At first, police didn’t think it was linked to the feud, until a pattern began to emerge. A few days later, a car was blown up by a high-explosive firework in nearby Litherland Park.
The barrage continued the following month, shortly after Bonfire Night. Richard Caswell had been lying low since his car-bomb attack at the nightclub. But now he surfaced for the next phase of his terror campaign. However, this time the target would not only be Shaun Smith and his inner circle: he would also take the fight into the heart of the Cartel – into the millionaires’ row at the exclusive Sandfield Park estate, home to the Banker, one of his lieutenants, and one of the masterminds behind the Operation Pirate speed factories, and several other Cartel bigwigs and hangers-on. The younger generation were taking a liberty and they knew it. The car bomb was a big warning to the old guard that their reign was coming to an end.
Caswell parked the car outside the home of Jamie’s younger brother. Between midnight and 1 a.m., three explosions rocked the wealthy residents in their beds. Wayne Rooney’s house at the time was just around the corner. Witnesses described the first bomb as going off with a ‘massive bang’. The second and third were even louder. Six homes were extensively damaged and debris strewn all over the street. One house sustained £12,500 worth of structural damage. Most of the front windows were broken, and pieces of the car were embedded in the ceilings. Alongside the previous explosion at the nightclub, once again police described the bomb as ‘the most powerful on the UK mainland since the ceasefire in Northern Ireland’. The mantra was becoming normal now, boring even, for the local reporters that had to cover the story. But there was no other comparison worth making, as it was true. Luckily, no one was injured, although the fire service said a woman suffered shock. The scene was sealed off for 48 hours.
Almost immediately, the police realised that they were dealing with a new phenomenon. The leading officer, Detective Superintendent Russ Walsh, acknowledged that ‘This type of attack is taking criminality to a new, ridiculous level. What are they hoping to achieve, by planting bombs in a main street or in residential areas, where there is a high risk of injuring innocent people?’ A Force Major Incident, codenamed Operation Thornapple, was set up the next day. Once again, the forensic experts concluded that the device was constructed from the contents of display fireworks, packed together with a number of petrol containers. The main bomb had been placed directly above the petrol tank of the car: a move that detectives believed was designed to cause massive devastation.
In the old days, the Cartel godfathers would have put a contract out on the men behind the bomb and anyone they suspected who knew them, such as Sidious and Kallas. After all, the bomb had put their own families at risk. But most of the Cartel bosses stood by paralysed, not knowing quite what to do, worrying that if they spoke out, they would get more of the same. If Shaun Smith and his army of street warriors couldn’t defeat a ragtag bunch of scallies, who could? The old guard locked themselves in their mansions or fled to their boltholes in Amsterdam and Spain. But that was the problem. Their assets, the fruits of their criminal empires, had now become gilded cages, chains around their necks. The godfathers were tied to them and it made them easy targets. The new generation weren’t tied to anything. Several key figures got messages to Shaun that they were backing him. They had little choice: he was now effectively a firewall between the young Turks and themselves.
The barrage continued. The next day, at about 12.30 a.m., there was another explosion in the nearby Fazakerley area, outside the home of a former partner of a member of the family and her 14-year-old daughter. Chief Constable Norman Bettison launched a national campaign to control the sale and import of fireworks.
To some in the underworld, it looked like Shaun Smith was on the run. Although this was far from the truth, that was the p
erception. Though he had nothing to do with the bombs, Sidious now felt confident enough to resurface, and he did so in some style. By now he was dating a very well-known celebrity, a former soap-star babe turned singer and pin-up. Though she was high profile, her lifestyle suited Sidious. For most of the time, she was on the road or working in London. Sidious stayed close to her side, making him a difficult target to pin down.
In a bid to draw him out, elements loyal to Smith sprayed up the celebrity’s house with an AK-47 assault rifle. The star was not at home; she was away promoting her new pop record. But three shots were fired. One bullet went through the wooden front door and another shattered the frame. A police guard was mounted outside the house. The couple moved to a new home in Chiswick, London. But a fortnight later, a firebomb was thrown through a glass window in the front door. A second hit a neighbour’s car. The terrified celebrity, who risked damaging her career by associating with the gangsters, splashed out on £20,000 worth of hi-tech security equipment.
But it offered little protection. In Liverpool, she was left screaming in terror after three masked men trashed her car and wounded her boyfriend Sidious with a machete. The couple fled for their lives after their Range Rover was surrounded by the gang, who ordered Sidious to get out of the vehicle. He was stabbed in the stomach.
The Cartel The Inside Story of Britain's Biggest Drugs Gang Page 29