Gangbuster

by Peter Bleksley

  I got the biggest grilling imaginable from all three defence counsels representing all three defendants. They all got up one by one to have a pop. ‘You were using your girlfriend to infiltrate Richard and his associates because you were so desperate to arrest them.’

  ‘No, Sir, I wasn’t.’

  ‘You utilised your professional resources to go undercover to gain evidence against them?’

  ‘No, Sir, that is untrue.’

  All three of the lawyers knew within the world of the judiciary that I was a professional infiltratror. Word goes round the legal profession. It seemed to me that their technique was to paint me as a dirty sneaky bastard who would stoop to any level to get a conviction and persuade the jury to acquit. My evidence went on much longer than I had expected as they tried to nail the traitor tag on me. There were recesses, lunch breaks, adjournments. Each time I was recalled to the witness stand I had to pass within feet of the dock. Every time I left the court I had to do the same. Each time it was the hissing, the muttering, the barely audible death threats. Very uncomfortable, very unpleasant.

  I’d booked a much-needed holiday to start after my evidence had finished. I couldn’t wait to get some Spanish sun to clear my head. It was good, plenty of booze, pleasant company with a mate and I returned two weeks later refreshed and ready to go again and anxious to see Wendy again. It was then I learned that Richard had been the only one of the three defendants to be convicted on the drugs charges and had got four years jail. The other two walked scot-free. That didn’t help matters. Wendy had been called as a defence witness as the lawyers pursued the line that I might have deliberately used her to get to Richard, suggesting that our very first date was contrived to allow me to pursue an undercover operation. She was traumatised, her family were upset. Such was the impact of the case we reluctantly decided to call an end to our relationship. She was torn between allegiance to her brother and her affection for me. ‘OK, let’s leave it,’ I said. ‘It can’t work under those pressures.’

  Wendy, who was a very attractive and bubbly barmaid, had worked in a pub in South London I used regularly. A pal of mine who was going out with a friend of hers fixed up a blind date. Not totally blind because I’d seen her working in the pub and knew she was no old dog. I didn’t really know her, though, and she didn’t know me even though she had served me a good few pints.

  We went out and got on famously. We started to go out on a regular basis and over drinks one day she mentioned that she had a brother who was a bit of a scallywag. He’d been to Spain eighteen times in the last six months, had been in trouble as a youngster but despite that she still cared about him. I wasn’t too bothered. It didn’t matter whether her brother was a scally or not. It was us we were talking about. But I thought it wouldn’t be a bad idea to pop into the local nick sometime when I was in the area and find out a bit about him. It was only a few days later that I picked up the assistance call and found out more than I ever needed to know. But I hadn’t made any enquiries and I certainly hadn’t put the cops into him and definitely wasn’t undercover to nail him. I could see how suspicious it looked from his point of view and Wendy’s point of view. Now our romance had been killed stone dead simply because I was a cop doing my job. I’d answered a random call too many. A thousand other marriages and relationships, probably more, have been wrecked by the problems of being a policeman. Ours was another casualty.

  That would probably have been the end of it. Then, one Friday night some months later, I was in the pub having a drink when in walked Wendy. I’d grown a beard by then as one of my ever-changing disguises for undercover purposes. I was forever growing beards, growing moustaches, growing long hair, cutting it short to vary my appearance. I thought, So, how’s this going to be? She walked straight up to me with a big smile on her face, tugged my new whiskers and said, ‘Hello, beardy.’ That was it. The romance was reignited in a massive way. And just a few weeks later, she announced, ‘Blex, I’m pregnant.’

  She wrote to Richard in prison and told him she was expecting and, what was more, that I was the father. So now the man who hated my guts with a vengeance was about to become uncle to my baby. I could see more flak on the horizon.

  Sure enough, Richard went ballistic. He hatched an escape plot from the Isle of Sheppey Prison where he had just been downgraded to a Category C inmate and was only a few steps from freedom. He intended to head on home to London to sort things out. He told the family, ‘I can’t believe this bastard Bleksley is back in my life and about to father my nephew.’

  Fortunately, he only made it to the local railway station before he was apprehended. He lost remission and privileges, but none of his simmering hatred of me.

  Bradley was born in January 1988 three weeks prematurely weighing 5lb 13oz. And the first thing I said was that there was no way in the world that he was ever going to become a policeman if I had any say in the matter. He’s a keen cricketer, footballer and rugby player, and he’s a good pal to his dad. We see each other every other weekend and we holiday together. A great kid.

  But for Richard, the hatred went on. I’d had Brad staying overnight when Wendy came to pick him up. I made her a cup of tea and put it down. Brad, who was just a toddler then, picked up the cup thinking it was a drink for him and spilt scalding tea all down his chin and his chest. I heard the most almighty scream and went rushing in. I rushed him to the cold shower hose and held him there for ages and ages ’til the pain eased. Then we rushed him up to the hospital for sedation and treatment and fortunately the cold water had prevented any scarring. As we were driving home a couple of hours later with Brad safely curled up in my arms, I asked Wendy, ‘Where do you want to go?’ She said, ‘Let’s go to my mum’s.’ As we were pulling up outside she said, ‘There’s something I ought to tell you. Richard’s coming out today and he’s coming here.’ I thought, How bad is this day going to get? We walked into her mum’s house and Richard was already there. It was the first time I’d seen him since the Inner London Crown Court and been subjected to his tirade of abuse. Well, the atmosphere was unbelievable. I put Brad down and we exchanged small talk for a minute or two. Then Richard said, ‘I think we’d better have a chat, don’t you?’ We walked out into the back garden. He was lean and fit. He’d done a lot of weights inside. You couldn’t have fried an egg on him. I thought it was all going to kick off. Then he turned round and said, ‘Tell me, just tell me honestly, did you go out with Wendy to get at me?’

  I said, ‘Richard, you heard what I said in court, that was the truth. The answer is no. I’ll tell you again now, it was just a dreadful coincidence. That is the top and bottom of it.’

  Very magnanimously, and it can’t have been easy for him, he shook my hand. The feuding was done. And although I rarely see him, he is still my son’s uncle, and when we meet we are always civilised. Long may that remain so for all the family.

  Now, there’s action with intent, in the line of duty. And then there’s action you don’t really expect or understand. Especially in sleepy Shrewsbury in Shropshire. I’d gone there with close friends who had returned from living on the West Coast of America. We’d enjoyed the heady days of California’s Venice Beach together in the seventies when I stayed for extended holidays with them. We did the surfing, the smoking, the odd line of coke. It was an amazing insight into how the drug culture was sweeping through middle America. And as time went by, an invaluable grounding for my career in the world of drugs investigations. But that was all behind them now and they were back in the UK looking to set up the archetypal small country hotel and bar in Shrewsbury. I’d spent a backbreaking day helping them move in one Sunday in January 1990. Come closing time we all sat down for a well-earned drink. We toasted their new life and wished them well. Then there was a load of noise outside, like the local yobbos on a night out. It passed. Then a guy came knocking on the door and asked ‘Is that your car out there?’

  The VW Jetta belonged to one of my friends. ‘Yes, it’s mine,’ he said.

 
; ‘Well,’ said the caller, ‘a gang of local hooligans have just smashed it up.’ We looked outside and there was glass everywhere.

  I was off duty, I was shagged out and I should have just dialled 999. But no. I went legging it up the road after the yobbos. I caught up with them, right lairy bastards, and said to one of them, ‘Hey, I want a word with you’.

  He sneered, ‘Fuck off.’

  Charmed I’m sure. So I walked right up to him and said, ‘Did you just smash up my friend’s car?’ With that he threw a punch at me. I ducked. I thought, Right, I’ll have you for that. A full-scale punch-up started outside a church, spilled over into the graveyard and I was trading punches with all three of the yobs, a real bunch of scrotes. I was boxing at light heavyweight for the Met Police at the time so I treated it as a nice bit of practice. Wham, bam, it was fists everywhere. At one point I hit the lippy ringleader a stonking belt in the mouth and he went down on the deck with me after him. I told him I was a copper and was arresting him for assault and criminal damage. One of the others was yelling at me, ‘Let him go, let him go.’

  I said, ‘No way.’

  He stuck his hand in his pocket and repeated, ‘Let him go. If you don’t, I’ll cut you.’ With that he pulled out a knife. ‘I’ll fucking cut ya,’ he said again. Then I saw my girlfriend and my friends from the hotel coming towards us.

  ‘He’s got a knife, get out of the way,’ I shouted. I didn’t want them involved with this bunch of shits. The guy with the knife decided not to stab me. Instead he ran at me and booted me right in the head. Then the others joined in a general kicking. I was stunned for a few seconds and the bloke on the ground got up and started to run off. With that the local police arrived in force and started to scoop up everybody they could lay their hands on. I staggered to my feet and I saw the fucker I’d had on the ground running off along the road. I was after him like a long dog and had my hands on him again after a chase. There wasn’t so much resistance second time around and he was bundled off to the nick.

  We all went back to the hotel with some of the local police to make our statements and what have you. Then the uniformed duty inspector strode in and said, ‘Where’s the man who took on the EBF?’

  I thought, EBF — who the hell are they?

  The EBF, he informed us, were the English Border Front, a gang of local toe-rags who had wreaked havoc in the town for years. ‘If you knew how much trouble and disruption they caused in this town. This is a major success in our battle against the EBF.’ He said the gang regularly went on raiding parties over the Welsh border and picked scraps with Welsh lads. In turn, the Welsh would retaliate with raids into Shrewsbury. On their home patch, the EBF had been responsible for thousands of pounds’ worth of damage to cars and windows. My fleeting visit to Shrewsbury, said the local inspector, had cleared up the biggest gang of troublemakers they’d ever known. Not exactly big time on a global scale, but if the people of Shrewsbury can sleep easier, well worth the kicking.

  18: cracking up

  I knew I’d become dangerously out of control the day I nearly killed a close pal with a bar stool. Ten years of undercover work among the scum of the earth had finally taken its toll. I’d flipped, lost it big time. I knew it and needed urgent help. But I was to wonder long and hard afterwards why nobody else had seen the warning signs and taken pre-emptive action.

  My tangled home life coupled with the endless pressures of undercover work and the Zulu Cricket death threat from the Mafia had set me on the slippery slope that was to end the career I loved.

  The crunch came one day in 1995 after I’d driven from Scotland Yard and headed south over the Thames towards Epsom in Surrey to be briefed on a new assignment, calling at the National Crime Squad headquarters in Spring Gardens, Vauxhall, to pick up my evidence book and one or two other bits and pieces. I needed petrol and pulled into the garage opposite Tintagel House, another Scotland Yard admin block, on the Embankment South Side, to top up. Out of nowhere, a youngish bloke suddenly came up to me on the forecourt and in a broad American accent said to me, ‘Do you want to buy some speakers?’

  I’ve been offered moody schmutter in the job and out but never by an American on a garage forecourt in South London.

  ‘Er, no thanks, mate, I’ve just got a new music centre,’ I said.

  ‘It’s the deal of a lifetime,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, thanks, pal, but I don’t want to know.’

  I walked into the petrol station to pay my bill when this voice boomed out right over my shoulder, ‘Well, not in this lifetime then, eh?’

  It was him again. All I could think to say was, ‘Yeah, righto.’

  Now it was becoming a bit unnerving. Was this just a quirky coincidence or was this the Mafia’s threat to have me killed over the Zulu Cricket heroin bust at Gatwick Airport about to become reality? The bloke I’d had nicked, Alan Johnston, was safely away doing 15 years but he had plenty of pals out there. My mind was working overtime. If the intention had been to unsettle me it was working. I thought, Fuck this, and straight away threw all my anti-surveillance tricks into losing the bastard. I knew how to make him — or them — show out if they were really on my tail. I drove from Vauxhall to Epsom utilising every scrap of anti-surveillance knowledge at my disposal. On Clapham Common there is a big sweeping right turn going towards Tooting. I knew it well because I had lived in Clapham for a couple of years. I got there and I was not happy. I’d still got this distinct feeling I was being tailed. I did various back-doubles through Clapham and I was picking up motors behind me. I thought someone was definitely on me. There was a sure way to find out. I went up to the junction and did the most outrageous red-light jump you have ever seen. A real wrong ’un which only someone trying to commit suicide would follow me on. I wasn’t doing it to jeopardise other road-users, but I was trained and I had the experience and knew what risks I could take. I pushed it right to the limit, screaming across the front of cars heading straight at me.

  I saw someone had come with me, a little Ford Fiesta with two geezers in it. I made it by the skin of my teeth, and they had a real job avoiding a crash. They caught up with me a few hundred yards further on and pulled up alongside me. I thought, Fuck me, this is right on top now. Both geezers were giving me the eyeball. I braked to let them pass. They stared back. I was expecting a shooter to appear and I was thinking it had to be a Mafia hit. The American in the petrol station, then someone tailing me, it was all slotting in.

  I slammed on my brakes and they had to go ahead of me. I was behind where I could see them but they couldn’t see me. Then at the next set of lights, they roared off.

  Coincidence? I don’t know. But the whole incident made me very very jumpy. And that’s how I had been for months. I didn’t know it, but I’d become a bit of a monster to live with and work with. My girlfriend had even attempted suicide by drinking crushed paracetamol in a pint jug of wine because she couldn’t bear the strain of my petulance and irritability.

  Anyway, I continued on towards Epsom convinced that I’d had a narrow escape from assassination. I then met the blokes from the operational squad who were going to brief me up about the new undercover job — I was to meet the informant, go out and get the lie of the land. They saw I was in a bit of a state by now. This wasn’t the rough, tough, undercover cop with the red-hot reputation they’d been expecting. I rang the boss of the operation, who hadn’t turned out for the preliminary briefing, and told him, ‘I’ve had people on me, Guv. Don’t know who, don’t know why, but I’m not happy and I really don’t want to go out and do this job tonight. There’s something going on. I can’t put my finger on it.’

  The DI responded immediately. ‘Right, no problem.’

  He didn’t ask questions. Such was my reputation at that stage that my word would not have been challenged.

  ‘Are you all right? We’ll get you out of Epsom in the back of a car and take you wherever you want to go.’

  I was driven out, hiding under blankets like a fucking m
urderer, and taken to my home. I said ‘Take me to the boozer, I need a fucking drink.’

  I was totally hyped up and in a state of huge anxiety; my head felt like it might explode, and I foolishly thought a few pints would help.

  I was sitting in the pub trying to fathom things out, like whether I was about to meet my maker, and what the fuck was going on. A drinking mate came up and started talking about another pal of mine who was going out with one of my ex-girlfriends. He said, ‘When he took her out, you know, he did nothing but slag you off to her all night.’

  Under normal circumstances I wouldn’t have given a toss. But with everything that had gone on that day and the fact that my mind was getting screwed up more and more by the day, it assumed an importance totally and utterly out of proportion. I finished my drink, put the glass down and walked straight across to the other side of the bar where my pal was sitting. With no further ado, I went BASH and gave him a fucking right-hander that knocked him flying right off his bar stool. It was a belter, the like of which had not been seen in that pub before.

  He rolled over and over on the carpet and I then picked the bar stool up and raised it over my head. Now I was really going to do him. He was face down and I was going smash him on the back of his head. If I had, neither he nor I would be here to tell the story. He’d be dead and I’d be doing life. But literally in mid-swing, as I was bringing it down on him, someone shouted, ‘NO … NO.’ At the very last second, I brought it smacking down into the middle of his back. That still hurt him a lot but, thankfully, it wasn’t his bonce. People grabbed hold of me to pull me back. I was fired up and fighting them off. It wasn’t me at all. I don’t mind a good tear-up if it’s part of the job or gloved-up in a ring, but I was never a pub brawler. I’d gone potty. At that moment in time, I was just a lunatic. I’d cracked and didn’t know it. They managed to bundle me out of the back of the boozer and get me home out of harm’s way.