Hammered

by Mark Ward

  Unbelievably, he didn’t turn up to pay the wages I’d grafted so hard for. My mates went berserk but nobody could get hold of Dessie. The bastard knew I was about to go home to Liverpool. I felt gutted as I was driven to the airport with a mere 10 dollars in my pocket.

  Ironically, two months after I returned to Liverpool, Dessie sent me a text message saying he was sorry for not having paid me. Sorry! What he did to me was despicable.

  Much as I was looking forward to seeing my daughter Melissa and grandchildren Zach and Deri again, I returned to find that nothing had changed in Liverpool. I was welcomed home with smug comments like ‘we knew you’d be back’ and ‘what a waste of time going there’. One thing my visit had proved to me was what a shit-hole England was compared to Australia – and I was determined to return to Oz as quickly as possible.

  I would very soon have good cause to bitterly regret my return to Liverpool in more ways than one. Things were going well until I awoke one morning in November with a tremendous pain in the back of my head. It was excruciating – the worst I’ve ever experienced – and it got worse by the minute. I was sweating profusely and had pins and needles in my hands and feet. I was further alarmed to see my feet turn purple.

  My girlfriend phoned for an ambulance and before I knew it I was in the local hospital at Whiston undergoing tests. The doctors tried to find out what was wrong with me but I had them baffled. The symptoms pointed to either viral meningitis or bleeding to the brain – an aneurysm. As I lay there, for the first time in my life I feared that I was a goner.

  The doctors performed a lumbar puncture on me to try and detect whether there had been any bleeding to the brain. It was just my luck that a trainee doctor performed this delicate procedure – and luckier still that the consultant was overseeing him. I was tucked up in the foetal position, to open up my vertebrae so that he could locate the spinal cord before inserting the needle. I knew he was struggling when I heard the consultant say: ‘No, not there, you’re going into the bone!’

  After spending five days in Whiston Hospital I was transferred to Walton Neurological Hospital. The doctors were adamant that I’d suffered bleeding to my brain and they wouldn’t allow me to be moved. I wasn’t permitted to get out of bed and they even wanted me to use a bed-pan, but I wasn’t having that.

  I would hang on until I was bursting, then sneak to the toilet. I was soon found out, though. A nurse called Debbie said to me: ‘Mr Ward, I have had to pick dead men off that toilet floor just because they wouldn’t listen. Do as you’re told – and use the bed-pan until we know what’s wrong with you.’

  I was taken to the operating theatre, where they pumped a dye through the artery in my groin, which then passed along all the arteries in the brain. There was a risk that the operation could cause a stroke but I probably didn’t realise quite how ill I was at the time – I just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could, so I went along with everything. It’s a weird sensation, looking at your brain being pumped full of fluid while lying on a bed in the operating theatre.

  After surgery that night, my tenth in hospital, I commented to Melissa that I felt as though I was in prison.

  It was November 11, 2004 when I finally left hospital. I was told to take things easy and had to go and see a blood and heart specialist for a check-up. Christmas was just around the corner and I was dreading it. I like to buy presents for all my family but this year it was impossible. I felt as miserable as hell and was glad when Christmas had passed. I just wanted the chance to return to Australia and was determined to start the New Year in a positive mood.

  * * * *

  I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have acquaintances who have been involved in criminality. Pro footballers and other high profile people seem to attract friends and hangers-on from every walk of life and it’s so easy to become involved with them. I’ve had many friends who have taken different paths and indulged in various forms of criminal acts. Some have been sent to prison as a result of their actions.

  Where I come from in Huyton, it’s virtually impossible to walk through this part of Liverpool, take in the local pubs and not bump into somebody who has committed some crime or other – or is quite possibly about to!

  Early in January 2005, I reluctantly agreed to rent a property on behalf of a friend – not a close mate but someone I’d socialised with. I’ll refer to him from now on as Mr X because I won’t reveal his true identity. He asked me to do this favour for him and his associates because, in his words: ‘You’re an ex-Premiership footballer and there won’t be any questions asked.’

  I realise now that he knew, as a lot of people did, that I was struggling financially, vulnerable and therefore an easy target. The reason why I agreed to his request was the thought of ‘earning’ easy money for six months. My heart and mind was set on returning to Sydney and I thought this private, short-term arrangement was going to be my passport back to the Aussie sunshine and a fresh start.

  Mr X was well known to me. As I said, we weren’t exactly bosom pals but we’d had the occasional drink together. He was doing well for himself, drove a nice car, wore smart clothes and although I knew he was ‘connected’, I’m a great believer in taking people as I find them, at face value. I’m man enough to tell somebody where to go if I don’t want to be in his or her company.

  Mr X and I spoke about my recent illness and my dream of returning to Australia as soon as I could afford to. It was then that he offered me the opportunity to earn £400 a week simply by renting a house on his behalf. Over a pint and a Chinese meal, followed by a few girls back at his place, he wore me down and I finally agreed to accept his tempting offer. As he put it: ‘I’d have a few quid in my pocket for doing fuck-all.’

  Naturally, I did ask him what he wanted the property for, and his response was: ‘For a stash.’

  ‘Stash’ is defined in the dictionary as ‘a secret hideaway for valuables, usually drugs’, so that’s what I thought would be placed in the house. In truth, it didn’t really concern me at the time what was being kept there – it could have been tobacco, cash or even guns.

  It was a terrible lack of judgement on my part and I’ll always regret it.

  Acting on his behalf, I was to offer the local letting agency four months’ rent in advance – £1,800 – for 11, McVinnie Road, a two-bedroom, semi-detached place in Prescot, not far from where I was living at the time. This normal-looking suburban house was on a nice estate and unlikely to attract undue suspicion from neighbours and passers-by.

  On January 11, 2005, he handed me the money and drove me to Castle Estates in Allerton Road. The agency didn’t bother to make any credit checks on me – there’s no way I’d have passed had they done so – because I made the advance payment in cash. To the staff who dealt with the transaction I must have looked financially well off, when nothing could be further from the truth.

  I passed Mr X the keys, so he could get a spare set cut, and in return he gave me my first payment of £400.

  I felt great that night, pulling the wad of notes from my pocket to get the ale in at The Eagle and Child pub owned by my brother Billy. I wanted to buy everyone who had looked after me a bevvy, in return for their kindness. I remember one of the barmaids actually commenting on my generosity as I happily got the drinks in. She asked: ‘Have you had a good win on the horses, Mark?’ I snapped back: ‘No! Aren’t I actually allowed to have money?’

  I felt my first pang of guilt at my new-found wealth but, I admit, it felt good to have a few quid in my pocket again.

  The next day Mr X handed me back the original keys and asked me to arrange for window blinds to be put up throughout the house. He also wanted two timers to be fitted for the lights – one to go in the main bedroom and the other in the living room. He asked me to visit the house as often as I could, to ‘make it look as though the house was being lived in.’

  Already he was asking me to do things that I’d not agreed to. My suspicions aroused, I pressed him on this but he placated m
e by saying that there would be another few quid for me to follow next week.

  Like a complete fool, I just did as he asked.

  It’s difficult for most current or ex-players of high profile clubs to do things secretly or to blend easily into the background, even after your career has long since finished. I was reminded of this when I rang a firm of window blind specialists. It turned out that the lad they sent round not only knew me, but also our Billy, Uncle Tommy and the whole Ward family! He never shut up, bombarding me with a million questions. After a while, I had to say to him: ‘Are you a detective?’ I made up a cock and bull story that I’d be moving in there because I’d fallen out with my girlfriend.

  At first I went round to the house in McVinnie Road maybe twice a week but then the shit hit the fan when I entered the place early in March 2005. Nothing had changed in my relationship with Mr X up to this point. On this particular day, though, the smell as I opened the door was one I’d never experienced before. It was an overwhelming mixture of chemicals and a musty pear-drop concoction.

  I walked into the kitchen and it was as if somebody had been baking a cake on a huge scale. There was a food blender plugged in with white powder around its edges. There were plastic bowls, spoons, containers, plastic bags, tape and traces of white powder everywhere – as if it had been snowing in the kitchen. The work surfaces where covered in a film of dust.

  It was obviously drugs and I started to panic, big-time. I rushed upstairs and nearly ran into a vacuum packer machine plugged in at the top of the stairway. I knew what it was, as our Billy had used one to seal meat when he had his butcher’s shop.

  I walked into the main bedroom and saw that heavy machinery had been brought in to the house. There was a large block of metal with a pump by the side – a hydraulic press, as I learned later. It was used to repress cocaine into one kilogramme blocks.

  My heart began to race and I couldn’t believe the state of the place. I ran downstairs and rang the guy who was paying the rent. ‘What the fuck is going on here?’ I demanded to know.

  ‘Calm down, Mark,’ he said. I went on to tell him what I’d just found. He told me to stay put and he’d ring back as soon as he could.

  I sat, trance-like, on the sofa and the dire situation I’d got myself into was slowly sinking in. I’d had my usual Lucky 15 bet earlier in the day but this time the horseracing, on the screen a few feet away from me, was a complete irrelevance. I knew there and then that if what was going on at that house was ever detected by the police, I was totally fucked.

  My mobile phone rang. ‘Mark, I’ve just spoke to the big fella and he says he’s sorry and it won’t happen again … and he wants you to clean up everywhere and put it all out of sight.’

  ‘Fuck off!’ I told him angrily. ‘And you can tell the big fella, I want to see him to tell him to get everything out of the house.’

  I was warned by Mr X that I’d be very foolish to ask to see the big fella. It was made clear to me that he takes no prisoners and I’d be better off just getting on with cleaning the house and letting the lease run its course, by which time all the incriminating stuff inside the place would be well gone.

  Mr X knew my weakness, though, and he exploited it again when he hit me with: ‘I’ll see you tomorrow with your wages … and a bit extra.’ Every time I mentioned something I wasn’t happy about, he used money as the weapon to shut me up. I can’t say it wasn’t effective.

  I opened all the windows and started to get stuck into cleaning up the mess that had been left. I then dragged the heavy machinery into cupboards and out of sight. It would normally have taken two strong men to have carried that hefty metal lump upstairs but my adrenalin was pumping and I just wanted to finish tidying up and get the hell out of the house.

  To get my head round this frightening situation, I drove to Billy’s pub to have a pint and consider what I should do. I just wished I had enough money to have got on the next flight out to Sydney. I knew I was in a very perilous position – my whole future was at stake. I wrestled with the problem over and over in mind before coming to the conclusion that I’d have to ride out the storm – and pray that my luck lasted.

  But I was still angry and called Mr X to arrange a meet the very next day. I drank solidly for the rest of that day and was very drunk by the evening, desperately trying to erase the realisation of the dangerous situation I had foolishly got myself into. I’d never been an angel on or off the pitch, and I liked to play on the edge. I suppose that is how I lived my life off it, too. This, however, had gone beyond living on the edge.

  I was up to my neck in it.

  I remembered Mum’s words on the day she had paid for my flight to Oz: ‘Mark, you can fly too near the sun too many times.’ How right she was.

  My meeting with Mr X the next day led to another £500 sweetener being stuck in my hand. I protested that I still wanted out but he kept reassuring me and told me not to worry because the big fella had sorted out the problem. He said: ‘The house won’t be left like that again … just carry on and it will soon be July and the lease will be up, plus you’ll have more money to help you get back to Australia.’

  My life had become a roller-coaster ride yet again. I’d gone from being in Sydney and trying to make a new start in life, to coming home and being seriously ill and confined to hospital for 10 days. Now there was a very real risk of being arrested if events went horribly wrong for me again.

  If things were looking already bad for me, they were about to get much, much worse.

  30. MY WORST NIGHTMARE

  THE 12th of May is a date that will live with me forever, in more ways than one. Firstly, it was the birthday of my late father, William Joseph Ward, who sadly died in 1988, aged just 52.

  It was also on this day in 2005 that I was arrested for a serious drugs-related crime.

  I believe that if Dad had still been alive on that Thursday to celebrate his 69th birthday, then I wouldn’t have got myself into the nightmare situation that unravelled so dramatically. I had so much respect for my father and was always terrified of letting him down, but I certainly did this time.

  Billy Ward had always been very anti-drugs and I can imagine him turning in his grave at the circumstances surrounding his eldest son’s dramatic fall from grace. Our dad would have killed his kids if he’d caught any of us smoking either in or outside the family home, which is why none of us have ever smoked cigarettes.

  Although I’d been through tough times, financially, in the previous few years, a big win at the bookies the previous day had put me in a more positive mood when I awoke on that warm and sunny May morning – even though it wasn’t a happy occasion.

  I was attending the funeral of Patricia, the wife of a nice fella I knew called Stevie Adare. The service was held at St Agnes Church in Huyton, the tough area of Liverpool where I was born and grew up. After the funeral my Dad’s brother, Uncle Tommy, and two of his friends shared a lift in my Rover MGZT for the short drive to the crematorium at St Helens.

  As I pulled into the car park at the crematorium, my mobile phone rang. It was a woman calling from the Castle Estates letting agency, who had leased me the property in nearby Prescot. She explained that the police were outside the house and that the burglar alarm was going off. She said that as I was the sole tenant of the property, the police wanted me to go there straight away to turn it off.

  I told her that as I was nearby, I’d go to the house immediately. I apologised to my uncle, saying that I had to leave him there because something urgent had come up.

  Uncle Tommy looked me in the eye and asked if I was okay, as if he sensed something wasn’t right. I couldn’t tell him the truth because, apart from those directly involved, nobody else knew of the house I’d rented on behalf of a third-party. I left him looking confused and told him I’d meet up with him later, back in Huyton for a drink at The Quiet Man pub.

  I didn’t know it then that but it was going to be a very long time before I would be enjoying his company again, cha
tting over a pint and a bet and being amused by his dry, cutting wit.

  The drive from the crematorium to Prescot took no more than five minutes. I tried to remain calm and prayed that it was nothing more sinister than a faulty burglar alarm, or even a minor break-in, and that the police just wanted me to check if anything had gone missing from the house.

  But, deep down, I was concerned that it could all go horribly wrong.

  And it did.

  People have asked me since: ‘Why did you drive to the house – why didn’t you just disappear when you got the call from the letting agency?’ There was no point – the police could easily have traced me anyway. After all, the house in question was rented in my name.

  By now it was around 11.30am and I was driving on to the quiet estate where 11 McVinnie Road was located. I stopped at a T-junction and then looked to my right in the direction of the house, where my worst possible fears were confirmed. Parked outside the property, just 25 yards or so from where I was sat in my car, were two big, yellow police vans, a couple of patrol cars and up to a dozen officers congregated in front of the house, which was nearest to the corner.

  There was no burglar alarm to be heard – the police had lured me there with the help of the unwitting letting agents. The only alarm bells I remember hearing when I drove up to the house were ringing very loudly inside my head.

  I found out later that they’d had the house under surveillance for some time and, armed with a warrant, they had burst in to discover the drugs they had expected to find there. Inside, they also found the tenancy agreement document and a council tax bill with my name on it

  My heart was poundng and I couldn’t think straight. ‘What do I do now? What have they found? Do I drive off or go to the house and find out what all the fuss is about?’