The Devil

by Graham Johnson

  I hit a new low. I was resigned to never getting out. How was I supposed to dig the dirt on the Chief from behind bars? I could only rely on my oppos to a degree – there’s no substitute for your good self, is there? Also, if I didn’t get the Chief off my case, I was going the same way as the ‘Creme Egg Killer’, for sure. I knew I wouldn’t get a second chance at bail; they’d soon clear the prison out and find a place for me again.

  However, just when it was looking hopeless, a guardian angel came to my rescue. Eddie Amoo, my fiancee’s dad, was a wealthy guy. He had been a singer in a famous pop group called The Real Thing in the 1970s. They’d even had a number-one hit in 1976, with ‘You to Me are Everything’. You’ll definitely have heard it at a wedding, and you’ve probably danced to it. It’s a fucking good tune, I’ve got to admit it. Since then, Eddie had enjoyed a string of top-40 hits, and he’d built up a considerable business and property empire.

  Of course, Eddie didn’t have a clue what I did for a living. He never for one moment suspected that his future son-in-law worked for the unofficial Inland Revenue. All he knew was that I was devoted to his daughter – and he was prepared to give me a chance based on that. He stood bail for me. Can you believe that?

  I phoned him from the court to say thank you. ‘Eddie,’ I said. ‘You know what? You to me are everything.’ We both laughed. ‘Seriously, I won’t let you down.’

  If someone other than Eddie had bailed me out, I would have planned to abscond as soon as I was on the outside. Of course, I would have tried to discredit the Chief first, but that would have been a long shot, and I would have been straight on a plane to Holland or Spain or wherever if need be. But, of course, I couldn’t do that. I couldn’t let Eddie down. I couldn’t even just disappear to some far-off place and secretly send him the £100,000 I owed him. I had to do the honourable thing: turn up for court and face the music.

  When I hit the street in March 1991, there was no partying – it was straight down to business. Financially, I was down to my last 25 grand – my lowest net worth since 1980 when I had returned from London and lost all my dough to those card sharks. After Andrew had been killed, I’d bought his ride – a top of the range Saab – for sentimental reasons, but I had to sell it to get some money together.

  When a professional criminal is facing a sure-fire spell in jail, he will do one thing: try and make as much money as he can to support his family in his absence. Up until that point in my life, I’d always considered myself to be on the periphery of the drug-dealing scene. OK, I’d imported and sold a lot of drugs, but I had never just been a professional dealer. I had always had other strings to my bow. The Hull connection had been so fucking simple, half the time I hadn’t even touched the gear. I had never immersed myself fully in the drugs culture. First and foremost, I was a taxman.

  Now I had come out of jail, was on bail and only had around 25 grand left to my name. I had mortgages to pay, families to keep and the possibility of six years of bird ahead of me. Thus, I made the conscious decision to become a full-time drug dealer – to live, breathe and sleep narcotics. I would personally bring it in by the armfuls if necessary. I would become a one-man drug-dealing machine on an industrial scale. I would flood the streets with as much heroin, cocaine and cannabis – not forgetting our old staple Ecstasy – as was humanly possible. Get paid – end of story.

  I had made my decision; I just had to find a way of executing it. I am always planning ahead, looking 16 to 18 months down the road. On that occasion, my timing couldn’t have been more perfect. My old friend and rival Curtis had gone from doing 50-kilogram to 1,000-kilogram shipments, making him the single biggest drug trafficker in Britain according to official documents which were later published. Warren had first been identified by the police as a rising star in the drugs game in 1991, according to their files, which later came out in the media. His name had come onto the radar during Operation Bruise, a crackdown on a Midlands-based smuggling ring. At that time, they had Warren pegged as a middle-ranking operator. Within months, he had shot up to become the wealthiest criminal in British history, worth an estimated £250 million.

  As you may remember, I had started Warren off on his criminal career at the age of 11 when I’d recruited him into George Osu’s burglary gang. From then on, we’d both drifted in and out of each other’s lives whenever it suited us. Both of us were tough, bright lads, and neither of us wanted to play second fiddle to the other. So, for the most part, we ran in our own little separate outfits, bumping into each other from time to time around the barrio, doing business together when we had to. But there was always friction between us. Even so, deep down, I still wanted to be his partner.

  According to the press and the police, Curtis Warren’s official criminal history reads as follows: at the age of twelve, he picked up a two-year supervision order from Liverpool Juvenile Court for joyriding. Collars for burglary, theft, stealing cars (four times), robbery, offensive behaviour and carrying weapons were the highlights over the next two years. At the age of 16, he made the papers by mugging a 78-year-old grandma on the steps of a cathedral and was sent to borstal for 11 months.

  At 19, he went to an adult prison for the first time for blackmailing a street hooker and her punter in a crude back-street extortion racket. Curtis, being the kind of person he is, used jail to his advantage by networking with senior villains. These white, middle-aged godfathers would come to be labelled the ‘Liverpool Mafia’ by the media. They were the founding fathers of Britain’s drug explosion – men who would later go into business with Curtis and generate billions of pounds of drug money.

  Following his release from prison, Curtis turned to armed robbery in order to bankroll his pioneering investment in drugs. He held up a Securicor van with a pistol and a sawn-off shotgun, bashed the driver up and got away with £8,000. However, he was soon nicked and got five years for that one. When he got out again, he still didn’t have a kitty, so he went off to Switzerland to plunder sports shops for rare adidas trainers, Sergio Tacchini trackies and Ellesse tops. In 1987, he was caught robbing £1,250 worth of swag from a shop over there and was jailed for 30 days.

  At that point, he made the switch from street punk to serious criminal. When he got back to Liverpool, he set himself up as a dealer. He befriended an older, white villain called Stan Carnall, and they started doing business in Amsterdam. Like all success stories, they had luck on their side. They were ticking along, doing one-off shipments of heroin, when they were approached by a newly formed cocaine cartel from South America that was looking for new outlets in Europe. The official story went that Curtis and Stan then linked up with the Cali Cartel’s main salesman on the Continent – a 22-year-old kid called Mario Halley.

  Back in the UK, Curtis had started networking with the trafficking elite and was soon partners with Brian Charrington, a former second-hand-car dealer from the north-east. Between them, they started shipping in the first 1,000-kilogram loads into Britain. Warren later became a household name – an anti-hero for the ASBO generation. Within months, he was recognised by all the major firms in Manchester, Birmingham, London, Cardiff and Scotland, and was the number-one player in the cocaine game – bar none.

  To be honest, I wasn’t too aware of the significance of all this at the time. Curtis was just one of a number of lads from around the barrio who was doing very well. However, my newly discovered partner Rodriguez was only too aware of Curtis’s fame.

  I’d grown real close to my tax accountant Sandy. Her boyfriend Rodriguez, a Venezuelan, turned out to be a gangster in London, although he was very low-key. And, apparently, Curtis Warren’s reputation preceded him, even in the upper echelons of London’s criminal society.

  Rodriguez and I quickly became friends and partners. One day, Rodriguez asked me if I knew Curtis. When I told him that we used to do burglaries together as kids, it was as though I’d told him I was a personal friend of Tony Blair. Totally awestruck, he said, ‘You personally know him? So you could ask him to do some w
ork with you?’ Who was he talking about here – Bill Clinton? Curtis was a solid platinum underworld legend, and I didn’t even know it.

  ‘I wouldn’t like to, because it’s not that kind of friendship,’ I replied but Rodriguez forced, pressured and cajoled me into getting Curtis on board.

  However, when I thought about it, I realised it could be the perfect scenario. If I could, I would score off Curtis and ship the drugs to Rodriguez to sell. I told Rodriguez that I would put up the money, but he would have to do all the work, for which he would get half the profits. It’s a business principle that’s worked for me ever since. Even today in my property empire, I will supply the cash to buy the land and the materials to build the houses, but my contractor partners have to supply the labour, and we split the profits between us.

  As I thought this over, I realised that Curtis and I were very similar. Like me, he had a sixth sense. One time, he went to Burtonwood services to collect a £40 million consignment. On an itch of his nose, he allegedly turned his back on it because he had smelled a rat. Now, how much money do you have to have to be able to do that?

  As it turned out, no one got nicked that day, and Curtis reportedly had to cover the £40 million loss himself. If you’re in the drugs game, there is something called a ‘yellow pedal’ that usually gets the dealer off the hook in the event of a bust. Say, for example, that the £40 million consignment had been discovered by the bizzies. This would certainly have made the papers. Curtis could then show his international suppliers a press clipping to prove that the goods had been seized through no fault of his own. This clipping was called a yellow pedal, because the suppliers would often be shown a yellow charge sheet to prove that someone had been nicked and that they weren’t getting ripped off. This meant that everything could be substantiated, and there was no bill to pay.

  After the death of Andrew John – in a strange, grudging way – all our mutual friends were pushed closer together. Whatever the history had been between us, I knew approaching Curtis was worth a try. I had decided that Curtis Warren was to be my saviour.

  17

  IN LEAGUE WITH THE DEVIL: FWMD – FRENCHIE AND WOZZER MAKE DOLLARS

  I phoned Curtis. ‘Curtis, you all right?’ I asked.

  ‘Who’s that?’ replied the voice on the other end of the line.

  ‘It’s the long fella.’

  ‘Oh, the long fella, what do you want?’

  ‘I need to see you,’ I said.

  ‘See me about what? Do you want me to come to your house?’

  ‘You don’t know where I live, Curtis.’

  ‘Yeah I do,’ he replied. ‘You’ve got those three swords over the mantelpiece.’

  Even though we hadn’t spoken for ages, Curtis was letting me know that he had me pegged. The subtext of the conversation was: ‘You think I don’t know where you live? Warning: don’t try anything clever with me.’ So much was said without being said. One of Curtis’s key phrases was, ‘Sometimes information is more valuable than gold.’

  After the initial verbal fencing on the telephone, I told him that I was on bail, and it wasn’t safe for me to meet him in Liverpool. I said that I was moving to Dublin in Ireland until things cooled down. Curtis said that he was frequently in Dublin doing business, so we agreed to meet the following week.

  ‘You all right, lad?’ Warren asked.

  ‘Yeah, I’m all right,’ I replied. ‘You OK? How’s things?’

  ‘Oh, I’m surviving. You?’

  ‘Surviving.’

  I then launched into a brief history of the blackmailing of the Chief. I told him all about the statements that I had made to get us out of the police station. The pay-off for telling him all this was that I wanted him to think of me as being a man who he could work with. However, this confession would later come back to haunt me.

  Anyway, I told him that I had 25 grand left. He said, ‘I’ll do you a ki for that.’ I asked for more on scrap, so we reached a compromise – buy one get one free. I was getting 50 grand’s worth for 25 grand to get me up and running. After that, I’d have to pay for everything up front.

  In a matter of days, I was back for more, and business boomed from them on. My out-of-town connection would bake up the gear so that we got £1,200 for the ounce. That meant we made 17 grand on every kilo. From April 1991, we started doing a kilo every three days. That was seventeen grand every three days – roughly thirty grand a week – and we kept that up solid and steady until the end of July. Bam, Bam, Bam. All I had to do was meet Curtis in Dublin, get the goods off him, organise the courier and send them out of town.

  Now, the amazing thing about Curtis Warren was that he would actually serve me up himself. He was Interpol’s number-one target, the biggest drug dealer in Europe, with NCIS, MI5 and Drug Squad tracking his every move, but he would still take time out to come and sell me a couple of kis in person. Normally, he would have sent a bottom-feeder around with such a paltry amount. However, this deal was special to him. He was back working the street again. This was two kids from the neighbourhood doing business together. No international phone calls, no helicopters in the jungle, no Swiss bank accounts – just two lads from Liverpool grafting in a backstreet.

  He would arrive in his own hire car, park two streets away, walk up to the back door of the house I was renting and say, ‘There you go, Stephen. Where’s my money?’ He would then take his dough and leave. It was as raw and up front as that. He actually believed he was untouchable. I guess he had his sixth sense to guide him.

  We both had systems in place to arrive at my safehouse. To this day, I go around a roundabout four times, even if I’m just going out to buy a pint of milk. It’s just habit. I once went on a private-detectives course and learned about three-car surveillance – the authorities’ preferred technique. However, three-car surveillance is easy to spot if you know what you’re looking for. I learned how to travel southbound on a carriageway and all of a sudden switch to a northbound carriageway. This meant breaking a few driving regulations, but if somebody mimicked my move, I instantly knew I was being followed.

  I also had special mobile phones that allowed me to switch between several numbers without changing the handset. Curtis loved that. He never feared my physical prowess; he feared my intelligence when I showed him things like that.

  Everyone in our network kept logs of suspicious cars and detailed descriptions of undercover officers – information that we assiduously shared and disseminated. One day, a dark-haired man from a police unit in the UK was hovering around near my safehouse. I had a kilo of cocaine on me that had just been served up by Curtis. He was trying to appear nonchalant, but I could feel him watching me to see where I was going. I knew that I needed to get off the road, because I was going to get nicked any minute. I walked towards a railway bridge, but there was nowhere to hide. It was a 40-foot drop from the bridge to the ground below. People actually used to commit suicide by jumping off it.

  Suddenly, a bend in the road gave me the opportunity I needed. I was out of his sight for a few seconds, so I took full advantage. I jumped over the wall and dropped the 40 feet down to the railway lines. Martial arts had given me incredibly strong legs, and because I knew how to drop and roll, I could do it. You’d be amazed how far a young body can actually jump. I was a world-class athlete at that time, and I could actually vault a six-feet-high wall in a single go. One of my nicknames was ‘Frenchie Lightfoot’. You’re not catching me – I’m too fast, like the fucking wind.

  I scrambled up the grass embankment and relieved myself of the parcel on the way, stashing it carefully. I knew that he hadn’t seen where I’d gone. At the top, I slipped through a fence and deliberately came back into view. The whole daredevil exercise had taken less than 90 seconds.

  As soon as I got home, they swooped on me. Whoosh. There were three unmarked cars and about seven or eight officers, all in plain clothes. ‘Freeze,’ they shouted. ‘Get your hands up. We want to search you.’ Some of them were Irish police, others wer
e intelligence officers from the UK. They frisked me and searched the car but found nothing. They were completely perplexed.

  ‘Where is it?’ they asked.

  ‘Where’s what?’ I replied.

  ‘We know who you’ve just met.’

  ‘Who’ve I just met?’ I enquired.

  Nine times out of ten, the authorities jump quicker than they should. With them, it’s all a matter of timing: should we hit the suspect now, or should we do it a bit later? Then again, a few of us top criminals had a major advantage: a sixth sense that saved us time and again from total annihilation. Kenny Noye had it. Curtis Warren had it. And I had it.

  I gave Curtis a call to warn him. We never talked on the phone – one ring on a mobile phone was the signal for us to both go to a pre-arranged phone box. I used to change my mobile phone every three weeks as a precaution.

  Later that night, at around 4 a.m., I got dressed into my black SAS-issue combat gear. I crept into my backyard and carefully took the bricks out of the bottom of the wall, wide enough for my body to fit through. I’d learned that trick after watching a film about a gangster called The General. He had dug a tunnel out of his own garden, because the police were watching his front door. He would go out and rob banks and then come back into his ken through the tunnel. I slithered out into the night, stayed off road all the way to the railway embankment, collected the gear and sold it for 42 grand.

  Although I was living in Dublin, I frequently commuted back to the UK to see my family. If I was home, I’d stay in London and train at a very well-known boxing gym in the capital. I kept my training hours religiously, so Curtis would come to the club to see me when he was passing through London. Villainy goes hand in glove with boxing, right back to the Krays.