I replied, ‘Well, maybe, maybe not. The gun might go off, he might die and then we’ll never find our gear. We don’t need to do that. All we need to do is copy what the police and Customs do to us. Set up surveillance. Follow him and let him take us to the stash. He’ll lead us to it, I guarantee you. He’ll go straight to whomever he’s working with, and they’ll have the rest of the stuff there.’
The Rock Star gave me one of his long, hard looks, which meant he was not actually in agreement with my decision not to beat the Jackal up immediately. But he trusted my judgement as far as the bigger picture was concerned, especially on financial issues. In the past, in a crisis situation like that, he had tended to take his own counsel. He wouldn’t listen to me because he thought I was a bit reserved and too apprehensive to go in all guns blazing. Now he was willing to defer to my more businesslike way of handling things.
In a football analogy, I’m a defender. In a boxing analogy, I’m a counter fighter. The Rock Star was the exact opposite – an attacker. He always went on the offensive. It was the only way he knew.
He gave me one of his long looks and said, ‘OK, Stephen, but you fucking better be right. Simple as that. You better be right.’
I looked him straight in the eye and said, ‘That’s my money, isn’t it? And I’m going to be right.’
I got the Jackal to come to our offices. He came into the boardroom and put the one kilo onto the table whilst delivering his tale of woe. After each twist and turn in the story, we would say ‘Bad one, bad one’ and ‘Get away’. All the time, we were feigning compassion, as though we were three fucking Rupert the Bears.
Anyway, after the heart-rending finale, which finally accounted for the mysterious disappearance of the gear, we all put on a brave face, and I said, ‘Anyway, all is not lost. We’ll sell this kilo, get our exies back and you’ll even get a little drink for all your trouble. We’ll get between 22 and 30 grand for this single kilo, so there’s a few grand to go round.’
The Jackal looked at me, watching my every move and trying to read me. As he was older than me, I knew he’d pick up a molecule out of place. You’ve heard of double devious, well this guy was quadruple fucking devious. Nonetheless, I am a good poker player. I enjoy going to the casino and was getting pretty good at cards at that time, so I kept my poker face on. None of us were about to give anything away.
Throughout the meeting, I was thinking about the surveillance we had set up outside. As soon as the Jackal left us, he would be trailed to his next destination. Then it was game over. The surveillance team consisted of the Rock Star’s brother, a friend of Whacker’s and some of my counterparts. The plan was to trail him in three cars, using a rotation strategy. That meant the Jackal would always have a different car behind him. Even for someone as on top as him, it would make it difficult for him to suss us out.
In the end, it transpired that he had gone to a tower block in the Everton Brow area of Liverpool. As soon as he went into the building, our surveillance team deployed a foot patrol to follow him.
If you’re going to follow a black guy who doesn’t want to be followed, use white people – it’s common sense. Better still, use a white woman or a single white mum with a baby. Just get her into the lift behind your target, have her sit there petting the baby and get her to see what button he presses. Then you’ve got his destination. End of story. She can then press the button for a floor higher than him. Women are the best for following drug dealers, because men tend to dismiss them. They’re looking for geezers all the time. You see a bird pushing a pram and it doesn’t even appear on your radar. Police use the technique on a regular basis. They get their families to sit in the back of the car when they’re trailing you. I’ve had it done to me. You clock the car and think, ‘There’s a guy driving, but there’s his bird, and he’s got the kids in the back. He’s not following me.’ But they are – Special Branch tactics.
When we used the same techniques, I called it surveillance reversal – using the measures that were used on us but to our benefit. It’s all well thought through stuff, but I consider myself to be a bright fellow, so there’s no problem on that score.
Our spy observed the Jackal getting out of the lift on the fourth floor. As the door closed, our single mum also noticed that he’d gone into flat 23. Done deal. As soon as she rang through with the info, I phoned the Rock Star and said, ‘I guarantee the gear’s going to be there.’
The Rock Star started jumping around, saying, ‘I’m fucking going in now. I’m bursting the ken. I want to see his face.’ The Rock generally took things worse than I did. All I was interested in was retrieving the goods. I didn’t want to beat anybody up, if at all possible. Of course, I had a heater on me, just in case. As far as I was concerned, the Jackal was just one less person to share the goods with once I had them back. Under the rules of engagement, he was no longer entitled to anything.
To save a drama, I phoned the Rock Star to stall him. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Tell you what. Leave it for like half an hour, and we’ll go in together.’ I knew full well that I would be on the plot in the next 15 minutes. All I wanted to do was get the stuff and get off without any problems.
When I’m going into a potentially hairy situation, I always have a right-hand man with me. In this case, my right-hand man was an old pal called Wallace. He could lean on a steel door and it’d immediately fall in. We got to flat 23, and I listened through the letterbox.
I said, ‘He’s in there, Wallace. I know he’s in there.’
‘Are you sure?’ he replied.
‘Yeah. Deal with the door.’
Wallace was six feet one inch and around twenty-two to twenty-four stone – a man mountain. The door flew off its hinges and fell down flat on the floor. We were right over it and inside the flat within one and a half seconds.
When you burst a ken, it’s like American marines storming a house in Iraq. It’s all over in seconds, and you rely on your speed, aggression and mobility to catch your target totally off guard.
The flat was a typical high-rise abode, with a long corridor behind the steel-plated front door. Inside, there were internal doors on either side of this long hallway and a living room at the end, like the cross on a capital ‘T’. We started to kick open the doors. The bedroom on the left – clear. Bedroom two on the right – clear. Kitchen – clear. Living room at the end – clear. It was a fucking mystery. The Jackal had done it again. He’d outfoxed us.
But hold on. There was one place left to search – the khazi. Wallace and I slowly moved towards the door. I tapped it with my toe, and it creaked open slowly. Lo and behold, there he was – the Jackal himself – sitting on the toilet, like an emperor on his throne, having a shit.
The best news was that right next to him – resting on the side of the bath – was a briefcase containing the missing three kilograms of heroin. Nothing had yet been said because of the extraordinary nature of the situation. So far, the Jackal had just looked up at me with a quizzical look in his eyes. Then he spoke: ‘Fucking hell, Stephen, it’s you.’ I knew exactly what had been going on. He’d been sitting there, having a shit and nursing the three kilograms, thinking, ‘I’ve done it. I’ve pulled off the perfect stroke, and I’ve got the 75 grand. I’ve had one over on Frenchie. Oh, this is lovely.’
Not quite. Rewind a bit. Imagine you’re on the toilet, having the best shit in the world, with three kilograms by your side, and you’re thinking how great you are. Suddenly, the door crashes in, and seconds later the guy you’ve just fucked over is looking at you sitting on the khazi. I was laughing as the shit poured out of his arse in terror, and there was nothing he could do about it.
I’d been in situations like that many times before. In my experience, the first thing a guy would try and do is make a run for it – jump right through a window, anything to get away from the Devil. However, there was nowhere for the Jackal to go. Wallace was standing behind me in the tiny bathroom, swaying from one foot to the other like King Kong, and I looked l
ike one quarter of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There was no way out.
I pegged my nose with my fingers to avoid the smell, leaned over the bath and scooped up the gear. ‘Thank you very much,’ I said. ‘That’s mine.’ I handed the gear to Wallace and told him to take it to the car.
At that point, the Jackal thought his life was over. He had studied the book of underworld revelations and knew that the Devil always took revenge – mercilessly. I took out my Colt .45. Already, I could see the scenes-of-crime pictures flashing through the Jackal’s head: grimy bathroom, blood-spattered B&Q tiles and shit all over the place – a horrible and degrading death. What a way to go!
I took a step towards him. His lip quivered; his eyes were wide open. The smell of fear had now replaced the fumes from the faeces. I cocked the gun and leaned over his right shoulder as though heading for the back of his head. Instead, I followed through to the cistern, scooped up the toilet roll with the barrel of the gun and handed it to him. ‘You’ll be needing this,’ I said. ‘Because you’re in deep shit.’ With that, I was gone.
In the meantime, half an hour had passed. The Rock Star phoned me. He was all pumped up. ‘Are we ready to go, lad?’ he asked.
‘I’ve already been in and done it,’ I said. ‘I’ve got your gear, and I’m coming home with your share.’
The beauty of the Rock was that once he was sure the money was secure, all his aggression would subside in an instant. His attitude would change, and he would say, ‘Well, who are we selling it to, and when am I getting my money?’ This was where Whacker would come into his own and was why I liked him so much. We would give the gear to him, and he would have our dough 48 hours later. This was because Whacker was one of those kids who could knock everything out and get the cash in dead quick. Everybody loved him for that.
These days, the Jackal and I are mates again. We always have a laugh about that little caper. To this day, he tells everyone, ‘I once tried to rip Frenchie off. But he caught me with my pants down.’
25
THE DEVIL’S GHOST
Over the next couple of years, the underworld dragons’ den proved to be a big hit. We had a 75 per cent success rate on our graft and our reach extended globally. One day, a gangster called Skateboard put forward a proposition to harvest some super-strength skunk in Holland.
Skateboard was of mixed race, about four or five years older than me and had been an international drug dealer all his life. I’d got to know him when I had sorted out a problem for him using the ancient art of serious violence. He was a rich kinda guy – we’re talking millions – with a lovely big house in an exclusive part of the country. However, like all shrewd operators, he wanted to share the risk on any new venture.
The deal was this: I would put up all the money while he’d do the work and provide all the technical know-how. He asked for a £100,000 capital investment up front to set up an industrial-scale super farm in a disused aircraft hangar in Holland. He promised it would churn out a bumper crop every ten weeks. State-of-the-art technology would ensure that the harvest was of high purity and production-line quality.
Some of the other board members were wary about us putting so much money in while Skateboard contributed nothing. Nonetheless, I am a lot more business-minded than most villains, and I was of the opinion that it was like any new development in production – usually built with someone else’s money. I could see Skateboard’s rationale. If the worst came to the worst, it wouldn’t be him making the loss. I wasn’t doing the work, but I was taking the financial risk, the way banks do. I was prepared to do that if the project materialised and I got 50 per cent of the profit plus my investment back. To me, it was just a few mobile-phone calls made from the comfort of my bed.
The extra beauty about the proposal was that it was perfectly legal to grow skunk in Holland. There were low operational costs, as all the Dutch electricity would be fiddled by a pair of Scousers over there, and all the nutrients were being shipped in from the Third World for buttons. The labour was provided by sweatshop-cheap Eastern Europeans. To grow it cost us fuck all, but a kilo would wholesale at three grand over here – £100 to £150 an ounce at retail. Good money for weed.
We got the operation up and running and flooded the country with skunk. Within a year, my return had reached half a million quid. However, profits soon began to diminish – not because of the bad press surrounding skunk in the UK but because Skateboard had begun to slack off.
When a business matures, it often needs a troubleshooter to tweak it and put it gently back on track. The only problem is that I’m no Sir John Harvey-Jones. When it comes to motivating managers, my problem-solving repertoire doesn’t extend much further than my old friends – kidnap, torture and blood-freezing violence.
I used my intelligence network and found out the reason why Skateboard had been neglecting my interests. Apparently, he had been investing some of the capex I’d put up into a new Class A venture, which was giving him an even better return, so I asked him for my £100,000 back. He started to splutter and stammer, and um and ah, and I soon realised he didn’t have it. However, I didn’t show him my displeasure or concern. My poker face concealed all that from him. Instead, I started hatching a plot to get my money back.
Not long afterwards, I got talking to him about his new cocaine venture. He told me a shipment had just come in. I said, ‘I’ll buy five kis off you for £125,000.’ Then we shook on it. At the next meeting, I brought my new right-hand man Wallace on board and told him he could have anything we taxed over and above the value of my initial investment – £100,000.
Skateboard bounced into my office to collect his money. Instead, I tied him to a chair and whispered in his ear, ‘I’ve asked you for my 100 grand, and you haven’t given it to me. You’re going to call your runner now to get the money.’
He said, ‘I can’t be doing with that.’ Slap. I gave him a heavy-handed wallop on his face. This cut his mouth, and he started to bleed.
I said, ‘Look, you think you can use my fucking money and do something else with it. If you had given back my money when I asked you, you wouldn’t be having this problem. You better fucking make the call now.’
Anyway, he made the call and a young white kid came down with the cash. As far as I was concerned, I was in the right and a line had now been drawn under the matter.
The next morning, I heard a banging on my front door. I looked out the window and saw two South American brothers called Julio and Hector. Julio was the elder brother, the brains, and Hector was a street fighter who thought he could fight anybody.
Dionne was at work, so I opened the door in my dressing gown. ‘Come in, gentlemen,’ I said.
Immediately, they got down to business: ‘That cocaine you took off Skateboard is ours. That’s our five kis, and we want it fucking back. We know what you’ve done. You’ve set him up. You’ve been feeding him money for weeks and weeks, and then, all of a sudden, you’ve just snatched all the gear off him.’
‘Is that what he told you?’ I asked them as I slowly walked towards Julio. He jumped back at every step I took, watching me like a hawk. ‘Look, Julio,’ I said. ‘If I’m going to hit, I will declare it. I’ll say, “Defend yourself now, because it’s on.” So you don’t have to worry about me going to steal it on you or sneaking up to hit you, because that’s not my intention.’ I scratched my bollocks. I could see that Hector wanted to attack me, but I reckon he was overawed by my reputation.
I then said, ‘If you’d have knocked on my door and said, “Excuse me, Stephen, can we have a word?” and told me that this was your coke and what Skateboard had done, I might have considered giving it back to you.’ Obviously, I wouldn’t have done this – it was just a line I was using. ‘Instead you’ve accused me of feeding Skateboard for weeks so that I can rob him of 100 grand. How disrespectful is that? You haven’t asked me my side of the story. You’ve just decided that I taxed him. So get the fuck out of my house. You’re getting fuck all back.’
&
nbsp; I went into my kitchen drawer, pulled out my biggest knife and chased them like a pair of naughty schoolboys. ‘You’ve been banging on my door like you’re fucking somebody. Get the fuck out.’ However, I knew that Hector would hold a grudge over this and that I’d have to watch him, as he might try to test me in the future.
I was back in bed when the doorbell went again. This time, there was a female at the door. It turned out to be Skateboard’s missus. She pleaded poverty, saying that her husband had been foolish, losing all their money, and the 100 grand I had taken was his last bit of dough.
I could see that Skateboard had spun her a line, so I told her that her husband deserved it. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of the matter. However, not long after, I received a call out of the blue from Mick the Scorpion. He said, ‘You’re never going to believe what I’ve been asked to do to you. You’re going to laugh your head off. I’ve got something for you.’
We met at Café 53 in Bold Street. As soon as I sat down, he gave me 15 grand in cash and a Toc (Tokarev) automatic – an eastern European, 13-shot, 9-mm automatic handgun. He said, ‘I’ve been given those two things to kill you. This is the gun, and the cash is the down payment for a contract killing. And when you’re dead, I get another 15 grand. The job’s worth 30 grand altogether.’
‘Who’s put the contract out?’ I asked.
‘Skateboard and the Colombians,’ he replied.
The Scorpion had never forgotten that I’d gone back for him that time after the bungled tax job. He told me that he had always been indebted to me for not leaving him there to be slaughtered by the animals. He said, ‘I always remember what you said to me, Stephen: “You think I would leave you lying there when there’s room on my horse for two?” That was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me, and I’m now about to repay you.’
He pulled out a Polaroid camera. I asked him what it was for, and he said, ‘To go with this.’ He put a tube of lipstick on the table. I looked at him and thought, ‘A Polaroid camera and a woman’s lipstick?’ I’m a pretty sharp geezer, but I still hadn’t twigged.
The Devil Page 17