Gangbuster

by Peter Bleksley

  All in all, it’s a pretty thankless task being an informant handler. You only really get the personal satisfaction of locking the bad guys up. I remember my police colleague, who attained the rank of Superintendent despite a high-profile internal investigation into his links with a top North London supergrass, being asked at a CID drinks party what he thought about all the allegations that he might or might not be a rascal. He replied, ‘Some call me corrupt and some promote me.’ Amen.

  7: knife edge

  Danny Smithers – not his real name – was not a man you could ever say was at ease with the world. Big, sinister, angry, the threat of violence never far away. He was suspected of running a vast drug empire with tentacles in London, Liverpool, Amsterdam and half-a-dozen other big cities. He was a busy ‘networking’ criminal with nationwide links in the underworld here and abroad, a serious pro. He had a well-documented history of violence, was thought to have regularly ripped off other drug-dealers in brutal attacks and his name had cropped up in relation to a number of savage murders. An altogether nasty bastard.

  I knew from the start this was going to be one of those undercover jobs with more than the normal quota of risks, and I wasn’t wrong. We’d got a lead in to Smithers’ activities through informant Dave Norris and I went undercover, in my favoured jeans and ponytail role of cool drug-dealer, to meet various contacts on the fringes of drug crime in London to worm my way slowly into the Smithers inner circle of associates.

  They weren’t people we could instantly identify by name or criminal records, but were, and this was not unusual, people known only by their nicknames, or even just descriptions – Mick the Limp, Fat Alf, that sort of thing, people who were said to be selling a bit of gear or looking to find buyers for gear. We had vague leads like, ‘He’s a bald bloke who lives at so and so and drinks in such and such a pub,’ you know the sort of thing, all part of the jigsaw. These guys don’t make a habit of proffering their names, addresses and phone numbers. But you have to start somewhere. It’s a matter of digging, piecing all the scraps together to make your way up the ladder to the big guys at the top. It all adds to the uncertainty of the job because you just don’t know who you are going to meet on the next rung, or who might try to throw you off. But being a bit scared wasn’t a bad thing. It kept you on your toes, kept you alive. It was the old swan syndrome – on the surface you’re cool, calm and serene but underneath you’re paddling like fuck to stay afloat. You had to retain your cover at all costs, keep your composure, set up your credibility, try and pull the job off successfully. Most of all, stay in one piece. The adrenalin that coursed through my veins with each new assignment was addictive. I was hooked on the danger. And it was no less so than when they sent me after Danny Smithers. The buzz was there.

  Initially, your informant is your lifeline to get the operation up and running. He is the link with suspects and will initially give you your credibility as he introduces you into the criminal circles he’s planning to blow apart.

  ‘Yeah, I know this geezer, he’s kosher,’ or something like that. Nothing over the top. With Norris, we’d worked together so often, we had almost a set routine like Morecambe and Wise, gags and all, if I thought a laugh helped my credibility. We’d only have to polish up on it and change a few details with each new target. If I was meeting a new informant, and didn’t know them from Adam, I would need to get their background and preferences together – things like tastes, beers, food, habits, hobbies – that would give us some common ground to work on. Conversation lines would always include the obvious, like ‘Where were you born?’ ‘Where have you lived?’ ‘Where were you brought up?’ ‘How much bird have you done?’ ‘What well-known crooks do you know?’ that we could have a mutual chat about. But you’ve got to be careful; if they check you out with some top villain you’ve mentioned and he says, ‘Never heard of him,’ you could be in deep shit. All the time, the villains might be wanting to keep the informant in on the action while you are desperate to get him off the plot so that he can’t be sussed out.

  Undercover work was play-acting in a real-life drama and it worked best if you’d got a bit of a script to stick to. I liked to keep a couple of funny stories up my sleeve to break up conversations, keep it light, get them to like you as a bit of a funny guy, a crook with a sense of humour. You can’t have it all heavy nose to nose, eyeball to eyeball confrontation. You have to try to take out any tension between you and the villains. You’re trying to set up a business arrangement that’s hopefully going to make you both loads of money. You want them to be comfortable with you. You’re one of them.

  It’s vital that your snout has briefed you as best he can so that the enemy doesn’t get suspicious. The villains will always assume you are an undercover cop. You have to convince them otherwise. And they don’t hold back in checking you out. I’ve been thrown against lavatory walls and searched for hidden wires a good few times before they’d accept I was kosher.

  * * *

  I eventually met Danny Smithers after Norris and I had done the ground work around various boozers in South London. He was not an easy man to deal with. He oozed suspicion, wary of everyone. He operated around seedy, run-down pubs, and there was an air of constant menace about his lifestyle that made people uncomfortable in his company. I wasn’t any different. He was a difficult character to deal with, to say the least, and I had to dig deep in my undercover box of tricks to convince him that I was a genuine drug-trafficker of some considerable muscle. I could speak the language, I knew the scene. We agreed a trade involving a kilo of high-grade cocaine.

  I was now breaking new ground in covert police work in establishing a ‘freedom to roam’ policy rather than a static operation controlled by senior officers. I needed to be able to move with the action without having to gain consent from my DI or other controlling officer. I had to be able to improvise, move the goalposts if necessary. I’d found that if you were too stuck in your ways, refusing to leave a particular premises, for instance, because that wasn’t in the game plan, the villains were going to say, ‘Hold on, there’s something wrong here, why won’t he leave?’ Perhaps they wanted to pull out and go to the pub up the road. They might want to move to a pub five miles away to meet someone or have a drink. You could argue that your money was on the plot so you didn’t want to take it on to some other manor you weren’t sure about because of the threat of robbery. This was often true, because the prospect of being ripped off in the drug world was ever-present and the Commissioner of Scotland Yard would not take kindly to you going back and saying, ‘Sorry, boss, I’m £40,000 light on the drug-buy money.’ So I needed this flexibility, a right to roam in pursuit of villainy.

  When the evening of the cocaine trade arrived, Danny Smithers was his usual brooding self. You could tell he was a hard bastard. I had to be careful. Don’t say the wrong thing. Should I raise my game and portray myself as hard as him? That could easily lead to a clash of styles – not a good move.

  Should I pay a bit of due deference, the ‘respect’ the West Indians are so fond of. ‘Don’t diss me, man.’ OK by me. This could help massage his ego perhaps and, if he was feeling great about himself, and you’d made him feel great that a trade was on and that he was going to make some nice money, then you had the ability to maneouvre him a little bit in the way you want the job to proceed. You were aiming for all the key factors to be in place without arousing the suspicions of this very distrustful man; 1, that he would be nicked, 2, the gear was on the plot and 3, that you could make good your escape. If you’ve got him feeling happy, it makes things that bit easier.

  ‘Another drink, Danny?’ I paid my due respects without letting him take me for a mug. The deal was on. We were now on a ‘roaming plot’, moving with the action. It could sometimes be difficult for the supervising officers to keep tabs on. You work to a broad plan; you go here, you go there, wherever is neccessary. You are basically working on the hoof and they must alter plans at a second’s notice to make sure you are still in the
ir sights. The surveillance teams and the attack teams backing you up, always invisible in the background, have to have the brains and the flexibility to change the game plan with all changing locations and environments, a very difficult job which I really appreciated on so many occasions. I knew it could be difficult for them, and dangerous for me, if contact was lost, so I always tried to make matters as easy as I could for them, never doing anything in too much of a hurry, if we were on the move. I’d get to my car door and stop for a chat, either with my driver or one of the bad guys, or light a fag, blow my nose, any sort of delaying tactic to allow the back-up teams to keep with me. But this was not always possible. There was always a margin for error and black holes to fall into.

  The trade was scheduled to take place at a pub in East London, just off the Commercial Road, at Smithers’ request. Smithers was orchestrating the situation throughout, nipping in to see me, nipping out to make a phone call and, of course, wanting to see the money. I’d drawn £35,000 of the Commissioner’s money for the deal and had it all bundled up in £100 lots. Whenever I drew big sums, I insisted, much to the annoyance of everybody on the squad, that it was all rolled up in the drug-dealers’ special way. If it was in twenties it would be four notes then one wrapped over so that everything was in £100 rolls. It made it much easier to count out and it was what the dealers expected to see. If you were sitting in a car with a dealer, you didn’t want to be counting out every bloody note. It would take forever, so it was a case of ‘here’s some I prepared earlier’. When it came from the Yard cashiers, it was all in neat bundles of £5,000. I’d get some of the lads to fold it all down in £100 wads for Charlie Big Potatoes because that’s how I wanted to take it out. I knew the style because I was spending more time being a drug-dealer than a cozzer and this was how it happened in the badlands. I was totally into the lifestyle of a top drugs baron. I acted like a drug-dealer, talked like a drug-dealer, thought like a drug-dealer, behaved like a drug-dealer. That’s what made it work.

  Danny Smithers was satisfied and had his lieutenants in place. He called the cocaine on to the plot ready for the handover. I was given my directions to go out of the pub and down an alleyway and wait underneath a lamp-post where I could be seen. Then I would be approached.

  I was standing there looking the part, big-time drug-dealer, heart racing, adrenalin pumping. It was dark and it was cold and nothing happened for several minutes. You start wondering about a rip-off, a couple of big blokes appearing out of the murk and kicking shit out of you and legging it with the money. It happens a lot but you never hear about it unless some poor bastard gets shot. You just don’t get drug-dealers pitching up at police stations saying that they’ve been robbed of a large sum of drugs money. I was very aware of the risks and getting a tad lonely out there.

  Then one of Smithers’ cronies came shuffling up the alley, a little white fella with a woolly hat pulled down over his head. He looked half-pregnant because he’d got the gear shoved down the front of his jacket. He came down the alleyway – he knew who he was looking for, he’d been given my name and description – and he suddenly presented me with the package from under his coat, as they always do. He wanted me to take it quick. It was often pass the parcel with charlie or smack in case of a bust.

  ‘The money, where’s the money?’ he asked.

  I said, ‘Hang on, all you’ve done is present me with a bag of powder here, I’ve got to test it.’

  ‘You know it’s quality gear, it’s real quality gear, now where’s the money?’

  ‘Now, calm down,’ I said, ‘settle down, we’re talking about a lot of money here. I’m going to test this before you get to see a penny.’ I opened up the package in the middle of the alleyway because there was only one way I could test the cocaine; you can’t take a line, so you have to dip into the powder with a wet finger and then rub it on your gums. Because cocaine has anaesthetic properties – just like novacaine which dentists use – you can tell pretty well instantaneously whether it’s good gear or rubbish by how quickly your gums go numb. It’s like the early stages of a dental injection, a tingling then an anaesthetic effect. It hit me very quickly. I thought I was in the dentist’s chair. This was quality gear. Creamo.

  We were all set for the bust and I gave my signal to the waiting back-up squad; off with my Kangol cap and hold it in my right hand. That’s what they’d been told to watch for and I expected the heavy clump of police boots to be thundering up the alley, guns drawn for action. Nothing happened. I waited. And I waited. Nothing. Houston, we have a problem. At this point, I have a couple of options. I can break cover and nick him. But that jeopardises the informant, risks losing the arrest of Smithers, could blow the whole operation. Alternatively, I can stall for time. So I told the geezer, ‘No, I’m not sure, I haven’t got a feeling yet. I’m gonna have to have another dab, mate.’

  So I do it again, playing for time. The quality of the cocaine was never in doubt but I was having to buy a bit more time. I was thinking that I’d had a bloody great surveillance team on me all day but they sure don’t seem to be with me now. In fact, they’d lost me when I went down the alley and they didn’t have the nous to send somebody down to see what was happening. So I had another dab. And by now, my mouth is so anaesthetised I thought I’d copped a right-hander from Lennox Lewis. You could have ripped my teeth out one by one and I wouldn’t have known. I wouldn’t have felt a thing. I thought, If I have to take another dab I’ll seize up. It was like my top lip was stuck to my gums. Then they finally sent someone down the alley to see what was happening. The bad guy and I got into a sort of huddle and lit up a fag as if nothing was going on, like we’re just having a chat. But chatting had become near impossible. My mouth was like after you’ve had a tooth out. I could hardly speak a word it was so numb. I managed to mumble that I wasn’t happy and I was going to have to give the gear back to him. He knew it was good gear, he’d probably had a toot himself before the trade – so what sort of twat he thought I was I don’t know. I had no choice but to pull out. If back-up couldn’t be there on time to nick him, it would have to be one that got away. I started to move off muttering, ‘Fuck, fuck, fuck,’ under my breath. I was fuming. I’d set the job up, I’d got the gear on the plot, where were those tossers?

  I was disappearing into the night and the dealer was walking out of the alley when all hell broke loose. The heavy mob arrived. Someone was shouting, ‘ATTACK, ATTACK, ATTACK.’ They chased and caught him nearby. Then he nearly died from an asthma attack in the street. They ended up calling an ambulance for him and it was touch and go for a couple of days. He subsequently sued the police for damages but lost his claim. Talk about chancing it – he’d been caught red-handed with a half kilo of coke!

  Smithers ran a spurious defence after his case went to a retrial and was eventually acquitted of conspiracy to supply drugs and possession of drugs. There is a Scotland Yard report in existence which called it an ‘outrageous defence which totally confused or at least misled the jury’. Smithers is now in prison for other offences. If he wants to sue me for mentioning his involvement in the East London case I’ll see him in court.

  * * *

  Like many of the cases I was involved in, I was not asked to give evidence because my guv’nors wanted to retain my anonymity for future operations. If they had a strong enough case without me, they’d keep me out of it altogether. That way, the villains would never know I was an undercover cop. If it was necessary, I’d do it from behind a screen if the trial judge was amenable.

  On another job involving a big cannabis ring, I found myself negotiating with a small army of villains. I’ve never known any job in which so many people were involved.

  I was again posing as a buyer and the gang reckoned they could supply me up to 40 kilos of good-grade hash. As it happened, they didn’t have the ability to get the full quota and they only brought 10 kilos on to the plot.

  We were again on a fluid, roving brief and went to North London for the trade. Suddenly ther
e were six, seven, eight people involved, a bloody battalion of fingers in the pie. I wasn’t negotiating with one of them, I was negotiating with the whole fucking lot of them. I couldn’t hear myself think.

  I’d spent days working around the Holloway Road, getting dragged round pubs here, there and everywhere, meeting other people, trying to penetrate the gang. I finally ended up in a shop somewhere. Again, it’s late at night and it’s dark and I’m involved in a lot of heated negotiations over the cannabis with the bloke who’s running the place. The whole place is adorned with knives, machetes, swords, every sort of weapon.

  Anyway, it was gone 9.00pm, the place was closed to the public and I was locked inside with this mad bastard and his fearsome choppers. Tempers were getting frayed; it was boiling up into a nasty situation. They were insisting that I brought the money into the building. I argued that I wasn’t bringing in the cash in case it got nicked and I was thinking, Fuck me, I’m in a knife shop, I’ve got to be careful here. The bloke I was talking to was a daunting fucker; shaven-headed, big, tall fucking lump. He ran the place and was basically putting the deal together. I wasn’t budging from my standpoint until I’d seen the hash. They were getting shirtier and shirtier.