The next day, I went bare knuckle, because I knew he was a shit house, and my spider senses weren’t flagging anything up. I sucked the money out of them and emptied it on a snooker table to check the amount. ‘Thanks, gentlemen,’ I said. ‘Nice doing business with you.’
The moral of the tale is this: don’t stand on the young boys of today, because they will be the men of tomorrow – and they will come and find you.
Around that time, I had trouble from an unexpected source – in the form of one of my old karate teachers called Dylan. For years, I’d been harbouring a grudge against him. He was a big, fat cunt who didn’t like niggers and hated me because what I lacked technically as a fighter I made up for with courage and heart.
One day, Dylan said to me, ‘I’ll say what no one else will say to you. You’re only a champion because Alfie Lewis has trained you.’ Alfie Lewis was the star of our club, the star of the country and five-times world champion.
I said, ‘Mmm, I’ve been training with Alfie for two years. Dylan, you’ve been training with Alfie for eight years. How many world championships have you won? Or did you only get a silver medal? Get outside, you fat bastard. You’re always picking on me, and I’ve let it go, cos your sons come into this club and Alfie’s told me to leave you alone because he needs you for funding.’
However, he shit out of it, so I forced him to drop to his knees and apologise. Humiliation: it’s a Japanese thing.
Later, his son came into the changing-rooms and said to me, ‘He humiliates me on a regular basis. I’ve got no problem with what you did to him. I’m glad you did that to him, Stephen.’ Then we hugged. Dylan’s son ended up a terror in both the martial-arts and outside worlds.
During this period, not only was I avenging my past, but I was still collecting millions of pounds in unpaid drug debts. Whether they were Turkish or South American, the system was the same. I’d leave a message with their top boss, who would call back, screaming obscenities down the phone – how they were going to shag me, shoot me, burn me, what they were going to do to my wife, etc. I would let them finish their little diatribe and then give them some of my rhetoric in return, which usually made them think that they had bitten off more than they could chew.
Now, criminals worth their salt would usually go away and do their research on me before making further threats. The common response to their enquiries would be something along the lines of, ‘Fucking hell. Frenchie? They call him the fucking Devil because he’s that fucking ruthless.’
Nine times out of ten, I would get a phone call back: ‘Er, er, sorry about that. I didn’t realise.’
I’d say, ‘Oh, you’ve done your research now? You’ve found out who I am? You realise now that you might get yourself sucked into some serious violence.’
It’s all about tone and intimidation. The great Chinese military author Sun Tzu says, ‘Best battles and all battles are fought and won in the mind.’ Like when Tim Witherspoon knocked Frank Bruno out because Frank couldn’t look back at him during the weigh-in.
In nine cases out of ten, the reputation is a lot bigger than the man. It’s all about preserving the myth. I know just how to play up to it. I also know when to play it down. I’ve learned to utilise and read body language to my advantage. Most people give themselves away with a twitch or a look.
But there is one kind of debtor that it doesn’t pay to pressure – and that’s family. At various times, I’ve been owed a total of £36,000 by members of my family. However, I learned to always let the money go after one relative called Larry caused me great problems. After some argy-bargy, I went round to his house to collect the debt. Little did I know, he had shopped me to the bizzies and told them that I was going to be armed. Three police cars swooped on me and told me to get out of my car. Stephen, my son, was in the back. Two police officers came over and took hold of my arms. I’m still a big strong guy, but I was even bigger then, and I spun them round with ease. I then opened my car door and said to Stephen, ‘Everything’s OK. Don’t worry.’
Suddenly, two officers grabbed my ankles and yanked them from underneath me. As my head hit the car, another copper scooped me from behind the neck, and I was rendered unconscious for only the second time in my life. I remember feeling a prickly sensation in my right temple, then I was out.
I woke up in the back of a base vehicle with an officer pointing a firearm in my face. He said, ‘If this was South Africa, I could just waste you now. You’d be a dead man.’
I replied, ‘Well, fucking go on then!’ I then tried to bite the gun. ‘Shoot me! Kill me! If that’s what you want to do, do it!’ I went into madman mode, but I was only acting, because I knew he wasn’t going to shoot me. He would have had to endure a 12-month investigation if he had. He was just trying to see if he could make me piss or shit my pants – or start begging and crying for mercy. It was just like at the end of the movie Angels with Dirty Faces when Jimmy Cagney says, ‘No, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die.’ Was he really a yellow rat or was he just doing it so that the kids didn’t follow in his footsteps?
At the police station, they searched my son’s bag and found nothing. At that point, the gun-wielding pig tried to be my friend. I brought up a golly from the pit of my stomach and spat it right in his fucking face. As far as I was concerned, the moment a police officer abuses the power vested in him he enters into the arena of the jungle and the cauldron of the Netherworld. And who’s the king in the Netherworld? The fucking Devil, that’s who. Just to drive this point home, I told him that I would hunt him down to his house and get him there.
I encountered a further example of police brutality outside the Cream nightclub. I quoted PACE at the police, and they jumped on me, beat me up and charged me with a public order offence. It cost me thousands to fight it, but, eventually, the judge proclaimed, ‘Mr French has taken it upon himself to research PACE, and he’s always dealt with the police in a rational manner.’ Thus, I got my conviction overturned.
In my chosen career, high resolve was an essential characteristic for success. For example, one of my relatives called Tom started selling drugs to a dealer in Bradford by the name of Macdonald. Tom was owed about 50 grand off this guy, so he shot his house up a little bit and found himself in jail. It was my job to retrieve the goods. I didn’t know anyone in Bradford, but, within two hours, I’d got hold of a guy called West Indian Phil. He thought he was a yardie, but in no time I’d kung fu’d his arse, putting a few moves on him, and he shit out the goods. He told me the money and drugs were hidden in a broom cupboard. This is the determination, tenacity and reserve of STF – Stephen Terrible French. Eighteen months later, someone gave Macdonald a grand to drop the charges.
It was around that time that I started to question my life as a drug dealer. I’d try and justify what I did all the time. I knew that I was selling death and misery: causing kids to be brought up by junkie mothers. Nevertheless, I would say to myself, ‘Well, I don’t import the stuff. I only sell it or tax those that are selling it.’
I used to justify my criminal actions by concluding that the whole world was corrupt, especially those at the top. For instance, I would rationalise that Queen Victoria had stolen the Kohinoor diamond from India, but, just because she was part of the establishment, it was considered to be OK. Now don’t get me wrong. I’ve got the greatest respect for the monarchy. But, at the end of the day, the current Queen shits and pisses like the rest of us. To me, she is just a human being whose ancestors got ahead by being corrupt.
I was angry, frustrated and searching for something new. I didn’t know where to turn. Alas, to fill the void, I made the common mistake that many people make when they are going through divorces and midlife crises. I threw myself into my work – the work of the Devil.
20
HELL’S KITCHEN
Every drug dealer in Britain expected Curtis to get at least 20 years. After all, he was the perpetrator of the biggest cocaine haul in history, according to the prosecution. But the jammy
twat walked – on a fucking technicality. The prosecution case fell apart over the shady goings-on of the informer Brian Charrington. On the steps of the court, Curtis allegedly turned to the Customs officers who had worked for years to nail him and said, ‘I’m off to spend the £70 million I made off the first consignment.’ His nickname was ‘Cocky’, by the way. I was truly made up for him, but I still thought that I’d had a lucky escape. The key point was that I had seen the writing on the wall and had got out just in time. Even though he’d got lucky with this case, I knew that it was only a matter of time before they rammed it up him again.
In the meantime, Whacker had to go on the run to Holland and Germany. Before long, he’d sourced a cheap and plentiful supplier of weed. This coincided with me setting up shop for a while in a very rich and exclusive part of Europe, where cannabis was a rarity. I got him to buy 100 kilograms. I paid £700 a kilo in Amsterdam and sold it for £2,000 a kilo in this European country – £1,300 profit on a kilo.
The only problem was that for the next load we didn’t have any transport back from Holland. Once again, I was cajoled into going to a recently freed Curtis to see if he could help – although I hated asking him for anything.
Every king loves to bestow favours to his underlings. I could see the power trip he was on: ‘Yeah, Frenchie. You’re back at my fucking table again, mate. I’ve got to sort your problems out again.’ Picture the scene: we were looking at each other and playing a mind game – continual and unspoken – that we both knew was there. On the surface, I was happy to pay lip service to him, but, deep down, the gratitude was a burden.
He scribbled down an address in Germany, close to the border with Holland, and said, ‘Have your weed delivered to that address by 4 p.m. tomorrow and you’ll have it over here in two days’ time.’
Sure enough, our parcel was smuggled into a busy port in a container of motorbikes. Curtis’s men then unloaded it into a van and parked it in a pre-arranged place. Later on, when I was given the keys, I summoned one of my £500-a-day men to go and pick up the van.
I said to him, ‘We don’t know if it’s on top or not. Are you prepared to do it?’
He replied, ‘What is it, weed? Yeah, I’ll go and do it.’ This was because nine times out of ten there was nobody watching. Also, if he got nicked, I’d give him a grand and his family would get looked after while he was inside.
These £500-a-day men have super spider senses, and they have a good look around before they open the van. They know how fucking hard it is to hide a full surveillance team, so they’re often able to pick up on anything suspicious.
Anyway, the van was collected with the cannabis inside. The first thing I did was make sure everything was there. Whacker, the bloke in Amsterdam, had put it in the container, having wrapped it and given it a particular seal. Each crew has a different seal, and that is how you can tell where certain drugs have come from. Next was the weighing. I always made sure that I was personally present at the weigh-in. However, instead of 100 kilograms of weed there was only 95. That missing weed was worth ten grand of my cash, which equated to a new car and a holiday.
Somewhere along the line, someone had stuck down on us, just as used to happen after a robbery. Up until then, there had been trust and camaraderie between us. Nevertheless, this kind of underworld camaraderie is like Scotch mist. When it suits, it’s there, and when it doesn’t, it’s not.
I had to make a call to Curtis to suss out what had happened to the missing weed. I’m a great believer in contractual law and ironing everything out at the beginning of a deal. So, in my mind, now that it had gone wrong, he owed me ten grand or five kilograms, because from the beginning I’d made a verbal agreement with him. However, if you ever started talking to Curtis on the phone about drugs, he’d just hang up on you, so we arranged to meet up.
Although I was doing business all over Europe, I regularly commuted back to Liverpool. At that time, there was a big gang war going on in the city. This meant that we couldn’t meet in our usual haunts, as people were getting shot left, right and centre, so we met in the park. I told him the situation and said, ‘Well, you know, you either give me five kilograms of bush or ten grand.’
Curtis said, ‘All right, lad, I’ll sort it out.’
Although the transport was a favour, he was still charging us the going rate – 100 times £250. That was 25 grand for the delivery. The way I figured it, even if he had to pay us off from his end, he’d still have been up by 15 grand. This was part of his day-to-day business. It was what he was into, what he did best. Not only was he an international trafficker, he was also renting out his transport. He had transport all the way from Colombia, or so the rumour went. He supposedly had lorries full of cocaine in England circling the motorways all day.
The ten grand didn’t really matter. It was just that I didn’t want him to get one over on me. However, I could afford to wait for Curtis to give it to me. In the meantime, I paid off my partners Rock Star and Whacker, who were in on the deal.
Most drug dealers live from hand to mouth. Take my partner Rock Star, for example. One minute, he’d be driving the best car and so would his bird, and the next he wouldn’t even have a pint of milk in the fridge. It was all fast money, so it was spent just as fast.
Eventually, I set up my own transport network, and we carried on shipping weed over from Holland by the tonne. Business was booming, but the ten grand thing kept nagging me. A perceived slight can distort your mind and send you crazy. When I was in Pentonville, Ski Gold yoghurts were a luxury. One day, a top drugs baron did me out of two of these yoghurts. In revenge, I decided to murder him. I spent a month plotting and planning his death, like it was a military operation – all because I was thinking, ‘Does he think I’m a prick?’ After he stole my Ski Gold yoghurts, I had my eye on the fucker. Now I was having similarly dark thoughts about Curtis.
The funny thing was, my wife used to work at Granada TV, based at the Albert Dock, right next to where Curtis had his docklands ken. Every morning when I was back in Liverpool, I’d take her to work at 8.30 a.m. and without fail I’d see Curtis leaving the Albert Dock. We’d give each other a wave and smile through gritted teeth. I’d give him a wave, whilst saying to Dionne under my breath, ‘That fucking cunt again.’ But, if truth be known, I could not help but like and admire him. He’d also wave, probably thinking that I was a cunt, too. He always looked at me in a nervous, suspicious way in case I was coming to the Albert Dock to do something to him. Curtis was always very aware that he could be kidnapped, tortured and robbed at any time – when all I ever wanted was to be on his firm.
One time, I bumped into him and said, ‘If you’re not going to give me my money, I’m going to get it by any which way, because nobody keeps the Frenchman’s money.’ If you owed me, you paid me. If you didn’t pay me, you’d see me. At the end of the day, there was nothing that would stop me, short of a .45 in the head.
As well as this little niggle, I also had another nagging thought at the back of my head. All the time, I was thinking that I was better than this. I knew I could make money legitimately. Inherently, I knew I was worth more than picking drugs up from A, carrying them to B and selling them for X plus Y. All the while, I was questioning my self-worth. Whatever had happened to the world champ? I wasn’t doing anything about it, but deep down I knew my current lifestyle was a dead end to nowhere. I didn’t find it challenging. The treachery and betrayal had become a headache.
I also found the constant intrusion of the Old Bill disturbing. They regularly pushed my wife around when I wasn’t there, and there was nothing I could do about it. When the harassment reached breaking point, I seriously considered taking a policeman out. I actually thought about saying to Merseyside Constabulary, ‘Well, OK, let’s go to war, shall we?’ and then assassinating a copper.
So, like all men under pressure, I started to make mistakes – a lot of mistakes.
21
A PRESSING ENGAGEMENT
I received a tip-off
that a drug dealer called Mona had 85 grand hidden away. Needless to say, I wanted it. Marsellus and I kidnapped Mona, which turned out to be a very pressing engagement. Mona refused to tell me where the money was, so I put the Morphy Richards on him. Marsellus held him down while I ironed his arse and his arms with a red-hot steam iron. But the real coup de grâce was yet to be delivered – a 90,000-volt stun gun applied to his feet, neck and ears. The fumes from the burning skin and hair made us both baulk. By the time I got to his bollocks with the iron and the stun gun, he was screaming like a bitch. When we got to his pubic hair, he well and truly shit out the money.
We also took his red Mercedes convertible off him, sold it out of town and subsequently bought a brand-new one with the dough. On the way back, I dropped Marsellus off near his house. I went 150 yards up the road, looked in my mirror and saw the police swooping down on him. I had managed to escape by the skin of my teeth.
Consequently, I found myself on my toes in Manchester. Most people think that if you go on the run, you have to go abroad. However, if you follow basic rules, you can stay hidden for years, just miles from your manor. Top criminals like myself – and solicitors defending a case – rely a lot on the apathy of the ordinary police officer. Basically, they’re lazy bastards, and the only thing they care about is getting paid. I moved 30 miles up the road, lived under an assumed name, got myself a little flat and set up shop again in an Asian area called Rusholme. I also took the precaution of securing a safe house in Cleckheaton, near Leeds – just in case.
Any visitors from my old life simply had to cover their tracks when they came to see me. For instance, when Dionne came to visit, she would start off by leaving our house in Liverpool and travelling to my auntie’s, who lived over the water on the Wirral. Dionne would park her car outside their house, with the police watching it. My uncle would then take her down the back garden and smuggle her into a secret car a few streets away. She would then jump on the train to a place in the countryside before switching to a bus to Manchester. If there had been tail on her, she’d have lost it by then. In the meantime, the main surveillance team would be left sitting in front of my auntie’s house, thinking she was in there having a cup of tea.
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