As the men made good their escape, Harrison and his son bundled Cockerill into a car and rushed him to hospital. In his own words, Cockerill was sewn up by the doctors ‘like an old three-piece suite’. He had been repeatedly stabbed, an iron bar had been used to try to break his jaw and one of his legs, and his other leg had been hacked with a machete so badly that it was almost severed. Despite his life-threatening injuries, Brian Cockerill refused to assist the police, but others couldn’t wait to implicate people in the murderous attack. Paddy Conroy did not know it at the time, but David Glover made a statement blaming him. Paddy was arrested, charged and remanded in custody, but Cockerill came forward and exonerated him. It was a man named Phil Berriman, from Garside’s home town of Hartlepool, who had alerted Cockerill to Paddy’s plight by showing him David Glover’s statement concerning the attack on him. Berriman was well known amongst the criminal fraternity in the north-east, as he was often used by them to smuggle ‘various commodities’ from Europe into the UK. After helping Paddy in one incident, Berriman went on to be instrumental in almost sending him to prison for life.
After spending three weeks on the run around the Scottish borders, Paddy once more returned to the Bensham area of Gateshead, where he rented out another flat. It had been ten long months since his escape from custody, and he had rarely ventured outside. Paddy was beginning to feel claustrophobic, and the monotony of his existence was making him restless and agitated. Dave Garside had visited him one night and said that his friend Phil Berriman was sailing to Spain the following morning. If Paddy wanted a lift out of the country, Garside could arrange it. Paddy trusted Berriman, as he had assisted him indirectly in the matter concerning Cockerill, so his reponse was unsurprising: ‘Fucking right I want a lift, and Spain will do nicely.’
Paddy was advised to meet Berriman at a harbour near Hartlepool early the following morning, where he assumed that he would be boarding a boat bound for Spain. When Paddy arrived, the crew were still preparing the vessel for its journey. Paddy was disappointed to say the least, but Berriman explained that when the vessel did eventually sail from the north-east it would be docking in Torquay before setting off on the main leg of its journey. The voyage from Hartlepool to Torquay would take approximately two days, so, rather than spend forty-eight hours bobbing about on the ocean waves in a boat, Berriman and Paddy agreed that they would drive down in his car. Paddy stayed at Berriman’s home that night, and as the sun was rising the following morning they set off for Torquay. Paddy didn’t know it at that time, but customs officers had Berriman under surveillance, and they were photographing everybody he came into contact with.
Chapter Seven
Y VIVA ESPAÑA
PADDY CONROY FELT relief as he watched the English coastline fade on the horizon, but a sense of sadness engulfed him when it had totally disappeared from view. Maureen and his children were back in that green and pleasant land, and he had no idea when he would see them again. Paddy had secured his freedom, but at what price?
Prior to Collier’s abduction, Paddy had filled out the forms to apply for a new passport. For one reason or another, he had failed to post it, but after he went on the run Maureen had decided to do so. Paddy had warned her that it was a pointless exercise, because the authorities would never issue a passport to a person they were claiming was the most wanted man in Britain, but to Paddy’s surprise that is exactly what happened. Before heading for Spain, Berriman made a detour to Brest, in France, where he met up with two people he said he had to ‘discuss business with’. They were from the Newcastle area, and Maureen had asked one of them to give Paddy his new passport.
After completing their business in France, they set sail for the Bay of Biscay. Paddy may have been in a few scary situations in his life, but the night Berriman sailed into the eye of a storm would undoubtedly have been one of the most terrifying. Waves rising 40 ft above the small craft crashed down and tossed it around the ocean like a ball bearing being fired around a pinball machine. Berriman gave up trying to steer the boat and advised all on board to get below deck and hang on for dear life. All the lights went out on the vessel, and the occupants were smashed around the head and body by flying pots, pans and personal effects. The night air was freezing. Everybody was drenched in sea water, and the cold sweat of fear was pouring down their faces.
Before embarking on the voyage, Berriman had shown Paddy two survival suits that he had purchased from an oil-rig worker. These one-piece suits inflated when in water, keeping the people wearing them warm. They also had distress lights and whistles attached in order to attract would-be rescuers. There was a total of five men on Berriman’s boat, which meant three would be without survival suits if the vessel ran into difficulties. Paddy had made his mind up as to who would be wearing one of them if the vessel did sink.
As the boat soared to meet yet another huge wave, Paddy let go of the rope that he had been hanging on to and ran towards the steps that led into the hold. Crash! A wave broke on the deck, throwing the boat to one side and throwing Paddy down the steps. ‘Paddy, Paddy, are you OK?’ shouted Berriman.
A few minutes later, Paddy staggered up the steps from the hold dressed in one of the survival suits. ‘I’m OK now,’ he said, smiling. Berriman and the crew looked at Paddy, looked at one another and stampeded towards the hold in search of the other suit. From amidst the melee that followed, it was Berriman who emerged triumphantly, wearing the only other available survival aid. Berriman and Conroy stood in the galley beaming at their ingenuity while the rest of the crew grimaced and prayed that the storm would soon subside.
The following morning, the sun beamed down on the boat and the sea was as flat as a sheet of glass. Sitting out on the deck, Paddy watched as five or six disorientated racing pigeons swirled and tumbled in the sky above. Clearly exhausted after being caught in the storm, they landed on the deck of the boat when Paddy put bread out for them. The pigeons were so tired, in fact, that Paddy was able to pick them up and put them in a box, which he decided to keep them in until he reached dry land. Later that day, Paddy could see a coastline on the horizon, and so he asked Berriman where they were. ‘That’s Bilbao. We’re not far from our destination, now,’ Berriman replied.
‘Fuck your destination,’ Paddy said. ‘Get me off this boat now!’
As soon as the boat had docked in Bilbao, Paddy released the pigeons, grabbed his bag and headed for the nearest airport. Berriman was keen to remain in his company, for some reason, and volunteered to fly down to southern Spain with him. ‘The crew can sail the boat from here,’ Berriman said. ‘We will meet them down there.’ Thinking nothing of it at the time, Paddy agreed to let Berriman tag along.
When the pair arrived at the local airport, they booked themselves onto a small 30-seater plane that was bound for an airfield near Benalmadena. During the flight, Paddy noticed that the stewardess was walking up and down the aisle waving what appeared to be a P45 certificate. ‘Has anybody dropped this?’ she called out in both English and Spanish. Berriman, who had been in the toilet, emerged and took it from her. When he returned to his seat, Paddy snatched the certificate from Berriman and asked him what he was doing with a P45. When Paddy looked at it, he saw that the form was in fact a Crown Court expenses receipt. ‘What the fuck is this?’ Paddy asked. ‘Who have you been grassing up?’ Berriman bleated about things not being as they might appear, but when Paddy pressed him he admitted that he had given evidence in court on behalf of the police.
The rest of the journey was made in complete silence. When they reached Benalmadena, Paddy invited himself to a meeting between Berriman and his business associates. Paddy ordered Berriman to sit down and told him to explain to everybody who was present what he had done. The room had fallen silent by the time Berriman had finished telling everybody about the assistance that he had given to the authorities. ‘Would you inform on anybody again?’ Paddy asked Berriman.
‘If it was a choice between me and them going to prison, then yes, I would,’ Be
rriman replied. Before walking out of the room, Paddy dropped the Crown Court expenses form on the table and told all those present that they should have nothing further to do with Berriman.
After a few days in Benalmadena, Paddy rang home to ask a trusted friend if he had heard anything about his case on the news. Paddy was simply curious to know if the police were aware that he had left England. While talking to his friend, Paddy mentioned the names of some of the people on Berriman’s boat who had been kind enough to help him. Paddy was told that one of the men he mentioned, whom I shall call Patrick, was a good man, a genuine friend, and that Paddy was to ensure that he didn’t get involved with whatever Berriman was up to. Later that evening, Paddy took Patrick to one side and asked him what he was planning to do with Berriman. ‘He is smuggling nearly four tonnes of cannabis into England on his boat, and I am sailing it,’ Patrick replied.
Paddy told Patrick about the Crown Court expenses form and explained that he was risking everything by getting involved with Berriman. ‘Do yourself a favour and keep off that boat, or you’re going to spend the next decade behind bars,’ Paddy said.
The following morning, Patrick had left Spain, leaving Berriman without anybody to sail his boat back to England. Paddy, who was by now extremely suspicious of Berriman’s intentions, decided to keep a close eye on him and so suggested that they rent an apartment together. It was nothing too lavish, a simple two-bedroom property that overlooked the high street. Across the road was a café that was run by an English gangster’s-moll type and her Spanish boyfriend. The proprietor’s bleached blonde hair, waxed long legs and extra-large fake silicon breasts ensured that the numerous English villains in the town congregated there. Common sense told Paddy that if the police were trying to gather information about the criminal fraternity in exile then this was the place for them, and so he deliberately avoided it.
Every few weeks, Dave Garside and his girlfriend would visit Paddy in Spain to tell him what, if anything, was happening back in Newcastle. On one such visit, Paddy was talking to Garside’s girlfriend, who said that she had spent the previous evening in the café opposite his apartment, where an ex-Scotland Yard policeman had been flirting with her. She said that he had been buying her drinks all night and was claiming that he was on holiday. ‘What are you thinking, accepting drinks from a policeman?’ Paddy asked. In an attempt to laugh off an incident that she realised had disgusted Paddy, Garside’s embarrassed girlfriend rattled off some excuse about her being drunk and the entire evening being nothing but harmless fun.
A few days later, Paddy had a yearning for a traditional English breakfast. It was early, and he could see from his balcony that the café was empty. Paddy reasoned that it would do no harm to go in there while it was quiet, and so he rang Garside and arranged to meet him and his girlfriend at the café. They sat out on the veranda talking while they waited for their order to arrive. To their left was an old lady sipping orange juice, and to their right was a middle-aged man who seemed more interested in Paddy than his double egg on toast. Paddy watched Garside’s girlfriend as she looked around the café. There was no reaction when she looked at the old lady, but she sat back in her chair when she made eye contact with the man. ‘Was it in this café that the policeman was buying you drinks?’ Paddy asked.
‘Yes, yes,’ she replied. ‘But it was nothing serious, just a giggle, Paddy.’
Paddy asked her to look to her right and confirm that the man sitting at the table was the very same policeman. Feigning shock, Garside’s girlfriend confirmed that it was. As Paddy turned to look at the policeman, he got up from his table and walked away from the café. Paddy threw a handful of pesetas on the table, made his excuses to Garside and went in pursuit of the man. As Paddy turned the street corner, the policeman was walking towards a car park at the rear of Paddy’s apartment. Following him at a discreet distance, Paddy watched in horror as a motorbike pulled up and the two men astride it began talking to the policeman. The policeman pointed back towards the café. Paddy didn’t need to hear his words to know that he was talking about him. Paddy rang Garside and told him to fetch his car, before running back to his apartment to pack his bags. Fifteen minutes later, Paddy was driving out of Benalmadena and heading for a small resort approximately twenty miles away, where he rented a new apartment.
From that day forth, Paddy made a conscious effort to avoid contact, if possible, with anybody who looked remotely British. He would spend his days on the beach lounging in the sun and the evenings in his room watching endless Spanish television programmes that he couldn’t understand. Dave Garside continued to fly over from England to spend time with Paddy and help break up the monotony of his increasingly boring existence. Paddy thought nothing of it, therefore, when Garside said that he was coming over to see him one weekend and suggested that he meet him at the airport. Paddy was not prepared to go into the airport terminal building for fear of being recognised, but he did agree to wait for Garside outside in his car.
On the day of Garside’s arrival, Paddy drove to the airport and found a space in the middle of the main car park where he could wait for his friend. As soon as Paddy had switched off his engine, a car pulled up in front of him. It then reversed back until it was approximately a pace away from his front bumper. ‘Here we fucking go,’ Paddy thought. ‘If anybody pulls up behind me now, I am trapped.’ Seconds later, a car coasted up behind Paddy’s vehicle and parked inches from the bumper. ‘Out, out, get out of the fucking car. We are Interpol. We are Interpol,’ the plain-clothes policemen shouted as they leapt from their vehicles and trained their guns on Paddy. Lying on the hot tarmac with the Spanish sun beating down on him, Paddy knew that his days on the run were over. Paddy was handcuffed and helped to his feet while being informed in broken English that he was now under arrest.
When Paddy appeared in court, the magistrate ordered that he should be remanded in custody to Malaga Prison to await extradition back to the UK. Paddy had no experience of Spanish prisons, but he thought they could not be much worse than the penal dustbins that he had been incarcerated in back home. How very wrong he was. The special unit that Paddy was put into within the main prison was unfit to house dogs, the food he was served crawled around the dirty tin plate that it was on, and the prison officers shouted and spat at him as they walked past his cell. English citizens don’t have the best of reputations on the continent, but this was more than banter: Paddy’s fellow inmates appeared to genuinely hate him. Unable to speak the language and determine the reason for such deep-seated animosity, Paddy asked in pidgin Spanish to speak to anybody who shared his native tongue.
A day later, an Algerian man who worked in the prison kitchen was escorted to Paddy’s cell. The Algerian’s grasp of the English language wasn’t great, but Paddy did manage to converse with him by talking slowly, mouthing words and indulging in bizarre hand signals that reminded him of the game charades. Paddy asked why he was the focal point of so much hatred and abuse from the prison staff and inmates. ‘You are a very bad man, a very bad man,’ the Algerian replied. ‘You kidnap your victims, you torture them and then you rape them.’
‘Fucking rape? Fucking rape?’ Paddy shouted. ‘I wouldn’t dream of raping anybody!’ It soon became apparent to the prison officers that Paddy was on the verge of exploding into a rage, and so he was ushered back into his cell and the door was locked.
The following morning, an English-language newspaper from Gibraltar was pushed under Paddy’s cell door. Paddy’s photograph appeared on the front page, and the accompanying headline claimed that he was wanted in the UK for kidnap, torture and rape. Little wonder the entire prison population was out to make his life as difficult as possible.
When Paddy went out into the exercise yard for the first time, he was glared at by every single inmate. In one corner of the yard, a group of men were lifting weights, but they stopped as soon as they saw him. All around the perimeter of the yard, different ethnic gangs huddled in groups, whispering and pointing. Paddy knew w
hat was coming, but he had no idea from which quarter it would come. As Paddy walked back to the main building, he was struck from behind, and so he immediately turned and launched himself at his attackers. Prison officers streamed out of the main building and began cracking people’s heads with their batons. Paddy stood his ground, and the fight was over almost as soon as it had begun.
Paddy wasn’t physically injured, but the stress of the allegation that he was a rapist did cause him a lot of mental harm. Paddy’s once thick hair began to fall out in clumps, and he was rarely able to sleep or relax, through fear of attack. Whenever he saw somebody approaching him, Paddy was up on his feet preparing for yet another fight. He lost count of the number of battles that he had in the first few weeks of his imprisonment.
Paddy was told, rightly or wrongly, that 28 per cent of prisoners within that particular establishment had HIV. As Paddy was in no doubt that he was going to be engaged in regular close combat with his fellow inmates, he asked his partner Maureen to send him a pair of elbow-length leather gauntlets. He wanted to ensure that no opponents could bite or scratch him, just in case they were infected with a contagious and deadly disease. In the searing heat, Paddy would stomp around the exercise yard in his heavy leather gauntlets, growling at anybody who dared even to look at him.
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