The Devil

by Graham Johnson

  However, our Danny was too cute. He had the wherewithal to separate the money from the bugged bag. The police ended up losing track of the cash and the kidnappers – and they blew their top. Imagine if the papers had found out – the shame of losing £30,000 to a bunch of rag-arse kids would have been huge!

  Under pressure to save face, the bizzies redoubled their efforts, using cell-site analysis to try and track the location of the kidnappers’ mobile phones. However, Danny kept moving Lito and his kidnap team around the ghetto from safe house to safe house. Eventually, there was nowhere left to hide, so, as a double bluff, they opted to go to the London HQ of the Jaafan family, hoping that the police wouldn’t cotton on. All they needed was a few hours to dispose of any evidence, get Lito Earl to agree to a cover story, clean him up, give him a cup of tea and tell the police it had all been a big misunderstanding.

  However, the bizzies were hot on the trail. Twenty armed officers raided the Jaafan house and caught Danny in the bathroom. At first, the bizzies were more interested in finding the £30,000 of traceable money they had lost. However, they soon found the cupboard was almost bare. Only ten grand remained – the rest had disappeared.

  That night, I got a phone call from the police station. ‘It’s me, dad,’ Danny said. He sounded very subdued and forlorn, and I knew it would fall on my toes to find a solution to the mess he found himself in. It was not the first time I had been obliged to get my adopted son out of a tricky situation, and I toyed with the idea of washing my hands of him altogether, but my conscience soon got the better of me.

  I got together with Harley Jaafan’s dad William, and we came up with a plan. We each agreed to come up with ten grand as a bribe to Lito’s folks to drop the charges – half the money up front and the rest when the case was dismissed. If Lito withdrew the statement of the kidnap allegation, only the ransom tapes and some police statements could be used as evidence in the trial. However, if the statements remained in place and they were found guilty, they stood to get between ten and twelve years. The statements made by Lito and his parents were the most damaging for Harley and Danny. But I knew from various sources that Lito and his family were shitting themselves at the thought of having to face the Devil. They knew that if they went ahead with the court case and put my son in prison, there would be serious repercussions.

  From experience, I realised that they would be looking for a way out. I also knew that 20 grand was a lot of money for people like Lito’s mum and dad. I’m not saying I’m anything special, but to me ten grand isn’t a great deal of money. To me, it is just a half-decent holiday in the Maldives or somewhere – nothing mad, just one of those all-inclusive deals. Dionne’s got to go to a place like that. There’s no fucking her off for two weeks in Portugal or anything like that.

  Anyway, my intermediary Neo arranged a meeting between me and Lito’s parents in a well-out-of-the-way pub in Wales. Being a cautious individual, I had invested in some state-of-the-art ex-KGB anti-surveillance equipment. I was feeling a bit apprehensive in case Lito’s folks had gone to the bizzies about the proposed rendezvous. I could easily have been driving into a trap. If truth be told, I was gambling on the French fear factor, letting my reputation do all the work and relying on them to make a deal without any fucking about.

  When I got to the pub, it was quite busy. I scanned the room and spotted a little couple sitting together in the corner. The mother was black and the father was half-Chinese. They looked very frightened indeed. They had no idea who they were supposed to be meeting. Neo had just told them to be there if they wanted everything sorted out. I went over and told Lito’s folks that I was there to sort out the problem. I then asked them politely to search me – to convince them I wasn’t some police stooge all wired up. Then I whipped out my bug detector to give them a quick scan.

  Lito’s mum said, ‘Look, we don’t want no trouble with Stephen French.’ She used the third person as though I was some kind of reverential being. ‘During the kidnapping,’ she continued, ‘we tried to get a message to you so you could persuade your son to release Lito. If that had happened, we wouldn’t have gone to the police.’ She then whispered, ‘We don’t want to go to court.’

  We cut a deal. The next day, I got Neo to drop ten grand to them as a deposit. By accepting it, they had joined forces with the Devil in perverting the course of justice. However, the case dragged on, and after a few months the charges still hadn’t been formally dropped. This was partly because Lito had foolishly carried on his drug-dealing activities following the kidnap and had ended up on remand, and partly because Neo had failed to make regular contact with Lito’s old dears. Later, I discovered the reason for Neo’s lack of assistance. It was all down to bad blood between him and Danny.

  Apparently, Neo had been driving past Danny’s house one day with two kilograms of heroin – worth around forty grand – in the boot of his car. Suddenly, Neo realised the bizzies were on to him. He pulled over, got the gear, vaulted the fence into Danny’s back garden, knocked on the kitchen window and asked Danny to hold on to the drugs. If Danny had been caught, it would’ve got him ten years in jail. Later, Neo only gave Danny £500 for his troubles. Danny found this paltry amount disrespectful, considering he had just put his neck on the line for a mate, so he plotted to tax Neo. Neo became aware of Danny’s plan, approached me and I put the blocks on the tax.

  Anyway, I knew Neo was playing me over the whole kidnap debacle, so I cut him out of the picture. As usual, I had to sort the mess out by myself. First, I went to see Lito’s mum and dad again, and said, ‘I’m telling you, when the police have finished with this case, they won’t be interested in protecting you, but they might be interested in investigating your murder.’ I was using a bit of theatricality and dramatics to put the frighteners on them.

  Lito’s dad said, ‘Are you saying you’re going to kill . . .’

  I said, ‘No, I’m only saying that the police might be interested in investigating it.’

  Second, I got one of the top dogs in the same prison as Lito to send him a message from me: ‘Your family has got French’s family in jail. You’d better let young French go.’

  This had a huge impact on Lito. Imagine that you’re in jail and one of the top guys has just come into your cell and made a threat like that. As soon as I got word my message had been delivered, I made a call to young Lito. Bang! The whole thing fell apart there and then.

  When Danny’s case got to court, all that was left as evidence were the tapes. Unfortunately for the officers involved, they had failed to follow the correct procedures when recording the tapes and the case was dismissed.

  However, that wasn’t the end of the matter. William Jaafan ended up blaming me for the whole situation and reneged on our deal to provide the rest of the bribe money to Lito’s parents, thus owing me ten grand. I wasn’t particularly bothered by this. I was just glad to have my adopted son home. Nonetheless, one of my allies used this conflict as an excuse to settle an old score with the Jaafan family. He had a go at William about what a dirty trick he had played by not paying up as originally agreed. In response, Jaafan threatened him with a gun, and full-scale urban warfare ensued between my firm and their family.

  One day when Grandmother Jaafan got into her car, it exploded, and she lost both her arms. It turned out that someone had planted an improvised explosive device made of Semtex next to the car and remotely detonated the bomb. Grandmother Jaafan had looked after my dad and Nathaniel Earl when they had first come to this country. From Windrush to urban warfare in just two generations.

  34

  HELL’S ANGELS

  In spite of my determination to go straight, I was well and truly on the slippery slope. To make matters worse, I still couldn’t resist hanging around with my underworld crew. We called ourselves the Herd. At full strength, our gang comprised 30 of the biggest, toughest geezers you have ever seen. The mentality of the Herd was that we did what we wanted, and if you tried to stop us we’d trample you.


  It was great to go on a night out with the Herd. We’d go to a club and watch the whole place disperse in fear, leaving just us standing there. It appealed to my dark sense of humour.

  Undisputed king of the Herd was the Rock Star – the Bengali tiger leading a herd of rhinos. But instead of trying to eat them, he was running alongside them. The Herd boardroom consisted of me and Franny Bennett, a fearless individual who could knock a man out with a single jab. The other main players were Paul Munro, an unbelievable street fighter and number-one jockey; two brothers called Chris and Russell; Quincy Sumner, a massive drug runner; and bringing up the rear were the Stevyns family, three brothers who ran a large security firm.

  The firm was broken up into subdivisions. One subdivision might deal in weed, another in coke or heroin, and there was a little subdivision that did nothing except go out for a good time and the occasional fight. When the Herd was in a club, the doormen and club owners would send over free champagne and all that carry-on. I’d always bought into the underworld concept of respect.

  One night, Chris and I went to a place called Bar Nine for a business meeting. The doorman, a gangster called Wally, knocked me back because he didn’t recognise me. From then on, it became a personal challenge for me to get into the club by any means necessary. Bang! I whacked him with a right hand, and he fell to the floor. Suddenly, there were eight doormen around us. At that point, Chris turned the colour of boiled shite. I was bouncing round, not going anywhere. The rest of the doormen started to come towards me. I took my right hand and slapped it on my right-hand arse pocket as though I had a gun hidden there. Still bouncing around, I said, ‘First one in is getting what I’ve got for them here. You know who my fucking crew are. I’ll have the fucking lot of yous.’ I then stormed inside.

  In the toilets, I was surrounded by Wally, another doorman and Wally’s brother Jake, a big hitter with huge muscles. I warned them, ‘I might be here by myself now, but I ain’t by myself.’ That was the beauty of the Herd – you were never on your own for long. I could see Wally had never been hit as quick and as hard as I had hit him, and his whole confidence was shaken. ‘Anyway,’ I said. ‘There’s three of yous. It’s the best fucking odds you’re ever going to have, so you better fill me in now.’ I was outnumbered, so I was playing a game of poker and bluffing them – this was when I always came into my own. If you want to be a king, act like a king. I said, ‘I’m going to the fucking bar to have a drink.’ Jake just looked at me helplessly, like a chicken with its head chopped off.

  I went to the bar, ordered a beer and drank it in a nanosecond, because I didn’t want to give them time to get their courage back. Then Chris and I left the club. No sooner were we outside than someone pelted a bottle at me. It should have been all on. However, I had proved that I was no coward by getting one drink, so the mob knew not to make a serious attack.

  I consider myself a warrior. I’ve answered the call to arms every time the horn’s been sounded. When things get heavy, you’ll find me suiting up my armour. You won’t find me lagging at the back. I’m always at the front, mate. And I have the scars to prove it.

  Not long after this, the Herd decided to stampede over to Las Vegas to see a Frank Bruno fight. I did a little shopping and forked out the equivalent of £200 on a pair of shades. One night, we were at a nightclub in downtown Las Vegas when I spotted John and Casey, two drug dealers from Liverpool who ran a security firm. Franny had never met them, so I took him over to introduce him. On the way over, I bumped into a lad called Philip Mackendrick, a professional boxer from Liverpool. Phil asked if he could have a look at my new shades, so I gave them to him. Before I could stop him, he had crumpled up my new glasses. He was Charlied to death and was just trying to show off and be the big man.

  He was standing to my left, and my right hand was furthest away from him. I switched my hips, threw back my left hip, came across with my right hand and cracked him with my Sunday punch. He rolled, hit a table and then came back up. It wasn’t until later on that I realised he had been high on cocaine, which gave him the ability to take a tremendous amount of punishment. He rushed at me and grabbed me around the waist. One of his allies then spun an arm around my neck, choking me. Franny Bennett pulled that lad off me and quickly rendered him unconscious.

  I ran across some tables and drop-kicked Phil. Down he went again. Then, just before I could finish him off, the Las Vegas security arrived – one Hawaiian and one Samoan. These seven-feet giants picked me up like I was a rag doll and carted me to the exit. On my way out, I grabbed a pillar, because I didn’t want to be thrown out of the club, but these guys just picked me up again and turfed me out.

  I was livid, like a crazy man. I found out that Phil and his crew were staying at the Las Vegas Hilton, so I rounded up the Herd and headed over there to get my revenge. As soon as we arrived at the hotel bar, one of their crew launched a bottle of whiskey at me, but I ducked just in time. Unfortunately, one of the Herd got the full force of the bottle, and it knocked him out. I went for Phil, but he legged it. Before we knew it, the police arrived, so we had to flee the scene.

  When I got back to England, I sent word to Phil that he owed me a grand for destroying my shades and my suit. In fairness, he paid the debt, but I knew there was still bad blood between us. Two weeks later, my brother Shaun, the Pugilist, who was now my pal again, and I all headed over to Everton Park Sports Centre to watch a boxing match. I knew that Phil and his Park Road crew would be there, so I took an equaliser with me as a precaution – an eastern European 6.7-calibre handgun.

  Sure enough, Phil was sitting in the bleachers with his crew. He said, ‘All right, Frenchie? Can I have a word with you?’

  Once we were in the loos, he started moaning, and I could see he was waiting for an opportunity to put his famous left hook on me. I pulled the gun out and stuck it in his fucking throat. I said, ‘I’ll fucking kill you, lad, I’ll kill you. You’re not in my fucking league. Stop fucking around and acting the goat.’ Once I was back outside, I said to his Park Road crew, ‘Before he tells you any shit, he’s just swallowed big time in the toilets.’ By this I meant that his arse had gone and that he had deferred to my greater power.

  The Pugilist, Shaun and I then left. When you’ve done something like that – humiliated someone – you don’t just sit there and give them the chance to get themselves back together. You get off.

  35

  HELL FIRE

  I was now slipping back into my former life at a horrific rate. I was on a ride I simply couldn’t get off, and I began to lead a double life, although Chris had no idea that I was up to my old tricks again.

  The Rock Star asked me to collect a £200,000 drug debt, which one of his distributors called Dwight had run off with. Rock Star had been chasing him for two years. I knew Dwight was a slippery geezer, so I devised a trick to get him to meet me. He was involved as a witness in some case – the grassing bastard – and I pretended that I wanted to pay him lots of money to drop the charges. However, when he arrived, he was greeted by me and the Rock Star. I pounced on him and got a blade to his neck. To cut a long story short, the £200,000 turned up. I took £50,000, the Rock Star took £50,000 and we sent £100,000 on to Whacker’s wife to tide her over for Christmas while her husband was in jail.

  But that wasn’t the end of it. Dwight initiated a guerrilla war against my legitimate security business. He started stealing white goods from sites we were protecting. I went to confront him, but he ran away. The next day, Dwight and 15 of his friends, armed to the teeth, arrived at one of my sites just as I was in a meeting with Chris, who was still blissfully unaware of this side of my life. Although I was seriously outnumbered, experience as a seasoned campaigner had taught me how to handle that kind of situation. I told them that even if they crippled me, I’d have my brothers push me in a wheelchair so that I could find them and blast them to death. Astonishingly, Chris and I walked away unscathed.

  That same night, someone blew up Dwight’s car. It was fair
retribution for trying to embarrass me in such a fashion. My pride and ego were still a little bit dented, so I plotted to cut off one of Dwight’s ears as well. Fortunately for the little scally, I ended up bumping into Marsellus, who had recently got out of prison, and he persuaded me to leave it.

  My return to the underworld took a deadly serious turn. In the year 2000, the police informed me that there was a £30,000 contract on my life. ‘Here we go again!’ I thought. I said to the officer, ‘Fair enough. Now can you tell me who it is? King Kong or Mickey Mouse?’ In other words, were they seriously dangerous people or just kids messing about? The bizzy was not at liberty to say.

  Within hours, I’d found out that the man who had issued the contract was a guy called Derek Sweeney, a member of a nightclub security crew from Everton – a staunch nigger-hating gang. The Herd and I were being blamed for firebombing his house, an incident in which his two daughters had been tragically injured.

  I got hold of Sweeney’s right-hand man and said to him, ‘Look, I sympathise with what happened to Derek’s family, cos I’m a father too, but somebody’s just thrown my name into the hat. If you check my Mo, you would know that when I have a problem with someone I go and sort it out face to face.’

  The guy said, ‘Don’t worry about it, Stephen. I know that’s not your style. I’ll sort it out.’

  I took him at his word and said, ‘As you know, I would normally kill a man who put a contract out on me, but because I’m a father myself and I understand I’m going to let it go.’