The Devil

by Graham Johnson

  One day, Dionne came to me with a message from Johnny Phillips. Like me and Marsellus, he was in the shit with the bizzies, and he wanted my help in straightening out a witness. A well-known man in the city by the name of David Ungi had just been gunned down in the street. David was white and the shooters were black, so the murder had triggered a massive gang war between the two communities. I was trying to build bridges through a white cousin of mine called Toby Marshall, who I’d saved from being killed by Johnny and members of his gang. The police couldn’t link Johnny to the murder of David, but they were able to pin an earlier attack on him. They had a star witness, a guy called Bubble, who I knew very well. I made a deal with Johnny: if I leaned on Bubble and told him to withdraw his statement, Johnny would in turn lean on the witnesses against me and Marsellus to get us out of our predicament. Mona had snitched on us for torturing him with the iron. I hate grassing bastards who run to the police when it gets hard for them. Johnny came to see me in Manchester to go through the details. As a sweetener, he gave me a Colt .45 and 15 grand before he left.

  I stuck to my side of the bargain and slipped back into Liverpool to threaten Bubble. I told him, ‘If you go through with this, if you give evidence against Johnny, your life will be over. And even if I don’t get you sooner, it will be murder for the rest of your life.’

  The next day, a terrified Bubble withdrew his statement and told the police he hadn’t seen anything. Johnny was off the hook. I didn’t lean on Bubble to cause any offence to the Ungi family; I was doing it to get myself out of a situation. I was trading off one thing for another to solve my problems. Tony Ungi, the eldest brother, is a guy I respect a lot, and I would do nothing to offend him. And that goes for the other brother Joey, too. It was just a case of realpolitik.

  The bad news was that Johnny (who was later killed by contract killers) was as full of shit alive as he was dead and didn’t keep up his end of the bargain. To add insult to injury, he had the cheek to ask me for his gun and money back. I told him to go and fuck himself. ‘Until you’ve done what you said you’re going to do,’ I said, ‘that’s my payment, cos I’ve kept my end of the bargain.’ He knew that he owed me, big time.

  The downside of being on the run was that it cost a lot of money to lead a double life. I had both a British and a Russian passport, which cost a few grand. Fake documentation to enable me to hire cars cost hundreds of pounds. I had to buy a different car every few months or get one given to me. Everything had to be bought in cash so that I wouldn’t leave a trail. My safe house had to be paid for up front. Furthermore, I had to keep on the move, which meant a lot of hotels – and they had to be four or five star. I wasn’t able to cook anywhere, so I had to eat out. You’re talking at least £15,000 a week just to keep your show on the road, if you’ve got a certain kind of lifestyle. Out of that, I had to keep my family going as well – mortgages, new cars, holidays, the works.

  To keep the money coming, I started once again to deal drugs at a prolific rate. I used every trick in the book to avoid paying for them, so I could make double the profit. I took counterfeit money with me to buy the drugs. Every week, I’d buy 50 grand’s worth of blouse notes for £200 and use it to buy a couple of kilos of cocaine from sucker dealers. I’d put the money in a plastic bag and let them see the cash when I walked in the room. If they managed to touch it or feel it, I’d let myself down. However, just showing a man a washing bag full of money and saying, ‘I’ve got my money, mate,’ often put him at his ease. I’d crack a few jokes and be gone with the gear before they’d even cottoned on.

  When I was feeling cocky, I wouldn’t even bother with fake money. I’d just fill a bag with potatoes and leave the dealers with that. I’d buy ten kilograms of cocaine for the price of a sack of spuds. Some of them would moan and threaten me afterwards. At the end of the day, they were acting illegally, so it was an open playing field as far I was concerned – a gladiatorial arena in which only the fittest would survive. If you can’t hack it, get out. Get yourself a nine-to-five. Don’t come fucking crying to me cos I’ve taken something off you. Just come and try to take it back off me. That was my philosophy.

  Nevertheless, even by taxing, I still couldn’t keep up with my massive expenditure. I had a lot of money stashed away, but sometimes I couldn’t get access to it. A lot of people owed me money, so I ended up constantly chasing them in order to keep the cash flow going. I’d been asking Curtis for my ten grand for months. Ten grand to Curtis was like a gnat’s bite to an elephant – fuck all. However, for some reason, he still wouldn’t give up the goods. I’d even been asking for my dough through his partner Peter Lair, who had a grudging respect for me, because we still had a connection through Andrew John. None of them would tell me to my face that they thought I was a cunt, but I knew they were saying it to each other behind my back.

  Anyway, one day, Johnny came to see me about a solution. He was still feeling guilty about his failure to lean on the witnesses for me and Marsellus, and he knew I wanted compensation for it. He told me that he knew where £450,000 of Curtis’s money was hidden. This was an example of the kind of treachery that was common in the world of drug dealers. Johnny had temporarily fallen out with Curtis, and anyone who fell out with Curtis always came round to my back door to see the taxman for retribution. They were always coming to see me saying, ‘Oh, I fell out with him. He’s such a prick, and he’s got this here and he’s got that there.’

  I was only really interested in my ten grand – as a matter of honour. However, if there was a bonus £440,000 going, then I’d have that as well. So I started to plan how to rob Curtis’s money. To be honest, I did this reluctantly. If he had kept to our agreement and paid me back the ten large, I would never have done him wrong. But he tried to dismiss me as a minnow when in truth I was a killer whale. I brought in a mate called Mick ‘the Scorpion’ to help. He was called the Scorpion because he was capable of deadly, extreme and irrational criminal betrayal. He got the name from an old parable: the story of the scorpion and the crocodile. The scorpion says to the crocodile, ‘Take me across the river.’ The crocodile is reluctant but is persuaded by the scorpion, who explains that he will not sting him because then they would both drown. So the crocodile jumps in the river with the scorpion on his back. Halfway across, the scorpion stings him. The crocodile asks, ‘Why have you stung me? Now we’re both gonna drown?’ The scorpion replies, ‘I’m a fucking scorpion, man. What did you expect?’ That was Mick – everyone expected him to sting them. However, I understood his philosophy. If I didn’t give him the opportunity to fuck me, he’d help me out.

  We soon found out that Curtis had two minders looking after the money in the loft of a house – a doorman called Rory and an Arab lad called Abdul. The plan was to get Mick the Scorpion to dress up as a CID officer with fake credentials. He would then blag his way in. I would steam in behind him, armed to the teeth, take care of anyone inside and grab the money.

  The stash house was round the corner from a pub called The Dart. On the night of the attack, I sent the Scorpion up to the door. I had my mask and gloves on, my tools to hand and was crouched down in a nearby car. I was coiled up like a spring. My adrenalin was flowing, and I was ready to fly. It was fucking show time.

  However, when the Scorpion knocked on the door, all hell broke loose. Rory ran out of the house, shouting, ‘I know it’s you, Frenchie. Aaaagh!’ He then ran down the street, waving his hands over his head, screaming like a banshee.

  ‘Someone’s fucking blew us up,’ I thought. They must have known we were coming. Rory was terrified out of his wits, because he’d been tipped off that the Devil was coming for him. Mick and I jumped back into the car and got off.

  At 10.30 that evening, my mother-in-law was putting out her rubbish. A voice shouted from the bushes, ‘Are you Stephen French’s mother-in-law?’

  She turned round, shit herself and said, ‘Why, why what have I done?’ She expected to be shot dead.

  A man appeared from the shadow
s. He put his hand in his jacket – and pulled out a plastic bag. ‘Curtis Warren sent this for Stephen. It’s ten grand.’

  Would you believe it? The cunt had finally paid me back.

  22

  THE DEVIL’S SCORPION

  Despite our failure to tax Curtis’s men, Mick seemed to think that he had what it took to work for the unofficial Inland Revenue. He’d been cultivating a couple of drug dealers in Liverpool and wanted me to help tax them. They were hard-hitters, who only dealt in five kilogram loads – extreme killers, armed to the teeth. However, they trusted Mick so much that they would invite him round to their stash house. During one of these visits, Mick had even managed to take copies of their house keys, using plasticine, and had his own set made.

  The Scorpion was ultra intelligent, ultra confident, 100 per cent focused and had a great personality to boot. He kinda reminded me of Michael Manley, the one-time prime minister of Jamaica. He could slip into yard talk better than I could. He knew everything there was to know about weed. The Scorpion was international – he’d done jail in France, Holland and Belgium. He wasn’t a fraidy cat.

  It was supposed to be a straightforward job: in and out – plain sailing. The plan was to tax the dealers then lock them in the house to prevent them from following us. On the day of the graft, Mick – armed with a bag of confetti money – went to buy five kilograms of cocaine off them as planned. I waited outside, dressed head to foot in my traditional black clothes. I then put my bally on and got into character. Four minutes later, I went in after Mick. Following his footsteps. I carefully opened the door and crept down the hallway. I knew by their voices that they were all in one room, weighing the gear.

  I booted the door in and jumped into the room, larger than life. ‘Nobody fucking move,’ I shouted. I immediately glared at the two dealers. Their eyes went wide with fear. All they could see was my .45. ‘I’m here to relieve you of your drugs. Give me the parcel and nobody’ll get hurt.’

  I scooped the gear up then pointed at Mick. ‘He’s with me,’ I said. ‘He’s in on the tax. He’s the one you find if you want to do anything about this.’ Mick wasn’t bothered by this, and it served as a psychological distraction – I had enough heat on me already. Then I threw Mick the door keys that he’d given me to get in and said, ‘Lock them in.’ This covered our escape.

  Our getaway car was a 1.3 litre Corsa. It was all we needed, because no one, in theory, could follow us. In practice, it didn’t go quite like that. I had only driven a mile when I looked behind and saw the people that we’d just robbed in hot pursuit. I turned to Mick and said, ‘You didn’t lock the fucking door, did you?’ He sheepishly told me that he’d forgotten.

  ‘Well, there’s no time for recriminations now. We’ve got a serious fucking problem on our hands.’ I’m a very serious individual and can keep cool under pressure. I would never forget details as Mick had just done. I’ve often made the mistake of thinking that others are of the same ilk as me. Mick had certainly talked a really good fight before the graft, and I’d really believed he’d known about taxing and the importance of remaining calm under pressure. However, his flaws were becoming clear to me.

  Nonetheless, being a professional, I always made sure I had a back-up plan. I would often trawl the streets of Liverpool, planning a contingency to every eventuality. One of the lessons that I’d learned was to use the urban topography to my advantage. I’d once come across a place called Ash Grove, a cul-de-sac. I’d studied it carefully and realised that there was just enough room to slam on in a car. At the bottom, there was a seven-foot wall, and if you could get over it, you were away. Being a world-class athlete, I could vault over this wall in one go. No one would believe it, but one night I’d actually tested myself on this wall and made it. Obviously, most people couldn’t do that, so my reckoning was that if I was ever being chased, I could use this advantage to get away. Whoever was following would have to retreat. By the time they’d sorted themselves out, I’d be halfway to Spain. If necessary, I would lay down some light suppressing fire from the Colt to keep them at bay.

  I wasn’t interested in the Corsa. That could stay in the cul-de-sac. I stopped the car, got out and threw the bag containing the gear over the wall. I then gazelled it and landed nimbly on the other side. I was home free. Not only had I four or five yards on them, there was also a seven-foot wall between us. Nobody was going to catch me. I could run faster than Kip Keino – a great Kenyan runner who used to run in his bare feet.

  I looked back when I was about ten or fifteen yards from the wall and spotted Mick with only his elbows and red face visible. He looked like that famous piece of graffito ‘Kilroy was here!’. He couldn’t for the life of him get over. By that point, I’d lashed off my balaclava and was on show. However, I quickly realised that Mick would be dragged down by these geezers and beaten to within an inch of his life. They wouldn’t even have the intelligence to interrogate him and find out where the stuff had gone, who his accomplice had been, etc. They would just set about him like animals. However, I had a ting on me. We had started this mission together, so we had to finish it together. I was duty and honour bound to go back over the wall.

  My instincts were screaming at me to keep on running. ‘You’ve got everything you need,’ I told myself. ‘Fuck Mick. Get back to Cleckheaton. You’ve got a hundred grand’s worth of gear to keep you going.’ Nonetheless, the ancient Japanese code of Samurai and my sense of honour wouldn’t let me do it.

  Unmasked, I jumped back over the wall and punched one of the dealers. ‘Get the fuck off him,’ I said.

  ‘Frenchie, Frenchie, it’s you. All right, Frenchie. We’ll back off.’ They put their hands up in a gesture of ‘We don’t want no trouble’ and started to back off. Even during the small beating, they’d managed to fracture Mick’s leg. I picked him up. He’d suddenly become Mick the Prick in my eyes. ‘Get over the fucking wall,’ I said.

  Later, we retrieved the car and drove back to Cleckheaton. The danger now was that the dealers knew who had robbed them – I was expecting a call at any moment. Mick was giving it the big ‘I am’, saying, ‘No matter who they are, we’re not giving any of the gear back.’

  Cleckheaton is a little village near Leeds and Bradford. It’s like the place in the ‘I’m the only gay in the village’ sketch, except in my case I was the only nigger in the village.

  As predicted, the phone went. It was Peter Lair. He said, ‘All right, Stephen. The five kilograms you took is ours. Those two fellers were selling it for us, and you’re going to have to give it back.’

  Every fibre in my body wanted to tell him to go fuck himself. I didn’t owe him anything. However, at the same time, he had been passing messages to Curtis on my behalf, so I did feel beholden in that respect. I had to weigh up the pros and cons. If I didn’t cooperate and Lair couldn’t find me, he would go after my family, my friends and my son. Make no mistake, Lair, whether he liked me or I liked him, was not a guy to be messed with. He was a fellow dreadnought, a street fighter the same as me. In fact, Lair and I had been circling each other for a while, and I knew this incident could be the trigger for an almighty showdown between the pair of us.

  While I was deciding what to do, Mick was still saying, ‘We’re not giving it back.’

  I said, ‘If you’d have got over that fucking wall, we wouldn’t have to give it back. But because you’re a fat cunt, I had to come back and save your fucking arse.’

  Mick hadn’t realised I regretted going back for him. I could have sent the coke down south, got a 20 grand deposit straight away and waited for the rest of my money. I could have stayed in hotels again and the £500-a-night suites. My name could have been Michael Winner – a film director – and I could have stayed where I wanted.

  Instead, I was stuck in a shit hole of a house in Cleckheaton, with no money, a guy with a broken leg and Peter Lair on my case. I knew I had to give the goods back – not out of fear, but out of respect.

  That was the one and only time
that the Devil ever refunded a tax – and I did it to maintain the status quo. To this day, Lair and I still haven’t had that street fight.

  23

  MIRACLE ESCAPE

  In spite of a few tax setbacks, I was still a free man – even though I was on the run. My motivation to stay on my toes was simple. Marsellus had just been given 15 years in jail for his part in the torture of Mona with the stun gun. If I got caught, I could expect the same treatment. I was still living in Rusholme and had come into contact with an Asian guy who kept bugging me about a deal: ‘Do you wanna buy some heroin? I can get top grade direct from Pakistan.’

  I kept saying no, to give him the impression that I wasn’t interested, but all the time I was grooming him for tax purposes. He kept on and on, and I could tell he was really excited. I could see it was a challenge for him to get in with the mysterious black Scouser who was knocking around his manor.

  In the end, still feigning reluctance, I agreed to help him out by offering to shift some of his gear for him. On the surface, I whined and moaned and told him, ‘Oh, go on then. Just this once, as a favour to you, I’ll buy some.’

  He brought me a sample of his brown, and I sent it to my boy in Scotland for testing. That night, I got the call from my man who said, ‘It’s high purity. Buy it. It’s champion.’ I arranged to meet the Asian guy in his lock-up garage opposite his shop to buy one kilo off him for £15,550. I only bought the one to make him feel relaxed and happy. If I had asked for more, he might have felt a bit out of his league. Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey.