Gangsters' Wives (2 page)

Sometimes people get lost in the Dave myth. They see him on the telly and they think he’s this or that, or completely unapproachable. That’s so far from the truth.

Dave is who he is – he’s never anything else. He never tries to be. Some people are one way in public and another way behind closed doors. Dave is just the same wherever he is. There’s no show with him. And he’s the funniest guy I know. Everyone wants to be with Dave because wherever he is, that’s where the fun is. The police raided the house a while ago and divided us all up into different areas of the house. A few of us were inside, and we were all clamouring to go outside with him because we knew that was where the fun was. He’s like a breath of fresh air.

In the face of adversity, Dave laughs his bollocks off.

Growing up, I’d never met anyone remotely like Dave. It just wasn’t in my radar. I grew up in southeast London, Woolwich – Greenwich. I’m a twin and one of fourteen kids. Growing up with so many brothers and sisters, there’s always sibling rivalry. We had some amazing fights, but I wouldn’t be without them now.

My parents were very strict. My dad is a mechanic, my mum is a housewife and a devout Christian. My mum used to have to take us to church – we hated that, sitting in the van with our hats on, having to make a dash from our front door to the van. She still won’t step into a pub, or smoke or tell a lie.

I used to think my dad was moody, but now I look back on it, by the time he was thirty-nine years old he had fourteen children. There’s not enough hours in the day, not enough days in the week, not enough money coming in. He just had a lot going on. He was doing the best he could.

When there are that many kids, there’s no house big enough. We always had a five-bedroom house, but I never had a bed to myself. Not ever. Not even when I moved out.

I left school at fifteen without passing any exams. It was a bit scary really – me and my twin sister Julia didn’t have a clue what we wanted to do. We ended up going to college to study community care – elderly, children, mental health, care in the community. We were really into rap music and we also started MC-ing in local clubs.

I got together with a guy and had two children – Genson and Drew – when I was still in my teens. I didn’t know at the time but the kids’ dad had mental health issues. It was only after I’d got with him and had Genson that I discovered he was a paranoid schizophrenic. He’d had a tough life. Once, when he was younger, he apparently walked into his flat, walked straight through and jumped off the balcony.

We were always breaking up and then getting back together. He was quite violent and I’d break up with him, but he’d still hang around until finally I relented and took him back.

When Genson was about seventeen months old and Drew was four months old, Julia and I were asked to MC a club called the Fitness Centre in Southwark Bridge. It was 1989 and we were booked through a promoter we knew. I didn’t know it at the time but Dave was the owner of the club. I’d never even heard of him.

When we arrived at the club, I went to put my jacket away in the cloakroom. All of a sudden, I felt a tap on my shoulder. When I turned round, there was this guy standing there wearing a Stetson, a waistcoat and cowboy boots with spurs. He had the bluest eyes I’d ever seen.

The minute I saw him, I fell for him. He looked so lovely. I was completely smitten, hook, line and sinker.

‘Hello, mate,’ he said, smiling.

I could hardly speak. I mumbled ‘hello’ and walked away with my heart pounding.

A short while later, he came over to me and offered me a fag. I thanked him, and as I turned to move off he stopped me and said: ‘I don’t know if you’re married or if you’ve got a boyfriend or what but I’m going to have you.’

I was really embarrassed. I didn’t know what to say and made some silly joke and he said: ‘I don’t just mean as a shag, I mean I’m going to marry you and have children with you.’

All the time, his bright blue eyes were just boring into me. I just squeaked: ‘All right then.’ And that was that.

At that time Dave was married, with three kids. And even though I wasn’t really with my kids’ dad, he was still hanging around. A few weeks after we met, Dave asked me, ‘Do you want me to make him go away?’

By that stage, I knew enough about Dave to know he was serious. I said, ‘I’d love him to go away, but I wouldn’t want you to hurt him.’ He said, ‘Leave it to me.’

I don’t know what happened after that, but that man never bothered me again. I don’t know what Dave did to make him ‘go away’, but I saw him around a couple of times and he wasn’t dead and he wasn’t limping, so that’s good enough for me.

Dave’s marriage was another story. He says himself that his ex didn’t do anything wrong, and she’s a really nice lady, but she was a casualty of his lifestyle. I was the tail end of a long line of women so I could imagine what she’d had to put up with. It was hard though. I have a lot of time for Tracey.

I’d already fallen in love with Dave by the time I started to find out about what he did for a living, and by then it was too late. I just didn’t care. At that time he was a big shot – debt collecting, running the doors – he had 500 blokes working for him. There were phone calls day and night, he was a really busy guy.

I’d only known him a little while when I saw a programme on the telly about him. It was called
Bermondsey Boy
, and followed him as he prepared to go to court for ABH and tampering with witnesses, and then as he was acquitted. I was watching it and I thought: I’m sure that’s that geezer from the other night. He looked a bit different, but I was sure that was the bloke I’d met. He was wearing the same ring.

It probably sounds mad but the programme didn’t put me off, even though it showed him turning up on doorsteps with a baseball bat in his pocket. As far as I was concerned, I thought I’d already seen everything of him I needed to see. I was so smitten.

The effect he had over me was so powerful, I can’t even explain it. For example, I used to suffer from really bad toothache. I’d be immobilised with it, lying in agony at my sister’s house, which was like a meeting place for everybody. Then Dave would come round and immediately the toothache would be gone. Just like that. My sister would be looking at me saying ‘Hang on, we’ve been running around for you all morning because your tooth was so painful’. Then the minute Dave left again, the toothache would be back.

We moved in together about four or five months after we met. I was living in a flat with absolutely nothing. When Dave made my kids’ dad ‘go away’, he took everything with him – the kids’ beds, everything. I just thought, I don’t care. I’d rather be left alone and have nothing.

As far as my kids are concerned, Dave is the only dad they’ve ever known. He brought them up. He was the one who took them to the doctor when they were ill, picked them up from school. Dave and I have got a daughter together, Courtney de Courtney, who’s now eleven, but he always treated my oldest two as if they were his own.

Dave was the kind of dad who made everything fun. If he was giving them a bath, the whole flat would be flooded, but they’d be having the greatest time. He’d cook, but use loads of food colouring so there’d be blue mashed potatoes and purple beans. There was always loads of mess and mayhem with Dave’s parenting, but always maximum fun too.

The thing that would probably surprise most people is that Dave isn’t just a comedy dad, he’s really considerate too. Really thoughtful. My daughter Drew was an early developer, and was a bit embarrassed about it and one day, without even mentioning it to me, Dave took her out shopping and had her fitted for her first bra. I wouldn’t have known what to do, but he whisked her off to M&S and came back with hundreds of pounds’ worth of underwear. She was delighted. I’m not quite sure what the woman in the shop thought – Dave’s white and my oldest kids are both black. But that didn’t bother him. He just wanted Drew to feel comfortable. That’s the kind of man he is. He’s a care-bear.

Dave is so soft-hearted. One time we were coming out of the Ministry of Sound nightclub and got chatting to this old bloke whose son worked on the door and who used to make a little bit of money finding legitimate cabs for punters in return for a couple of quid here and there.

Anyway, this old guy was really worried one night about a poll tax bill he’d received but he couldn’t pay. He was terrified he’d get a debt collector at the door. He said, ‘Dave, could you have a word so that they don’t come round?’ Dave took the bill off the geezer and said he’d see what he could do. Then, later on, he asked me to go into the post office and just pay it for him.

A couple of weeks later, the old guy comes running up to Dave outside the club, all smiles, and said: ‘Dave, I don’t know who you know, but I got a letter saying I’ve paid that bill, and I know I haven’t paid it. You must know some powerful people.’ Dave never let on he paid it, because he knew that would just embarrass the guy. Instead he just said, ‘Whatever you do, don’t tell your mates.’

That’s the side of Dave I fell in love with. Of course he has two sides to him, and there’s the side I don’t see when he’s at work. But it’s like he says, a bricklayer isn’t a bricklayer when he comes home. Dave puts on that ‘pay the money back’ head when he needs to but when he comes back home, he’s the most relaxed, lovely, funniest person. Right from the start I knew what he did for money, but he could always justify it.

One time, this geezer had robbed his partner who’d put £50,000 into this business and the geezer had put it into liquidation and opened up again across the road, almost exactly the same thing. Dave didn’t like that. He said to the guy who’d been swindled, ‘He’s legally robbed you. That’s not right. I’ll get it back for you, but I want half of it.’ Well, half of £50,000 is better than a whole of nothing, isn’t it?

Minimal violence is what Dave’s about. You look at Dave’s face, he’s got that kind of a look that says you don’t want to mess with him, so that way he doesn’t have to get nasty. Dave went into that bloke’s house in the middle of the night. He walked past the kids’ bedrooms, walked into the master bedroom, leaned over the wife and tapped the geezer on the shoulder, woke him up and said: ‘You know you owe the rest of the money, don’t you? Pay up because next time I won’t do you the courtesy of waking you like this.’ Then he went away. No violence, nothing.

He says that if he does it that way, the wife does the rest of the work for him. She says, ‘Pay the guy the money, for God’s sake – that man just walked into our house, past our children. Pay him.’ Course it’s not always that cut and dried. He‘s kicked the wrong door in before – he just says ‘Sorry, here’s the money for the door.’

I know what Dave’s capable of, and it doesn’t scare me. The fact that he’s killed someone in self-defence doesn’t scare me. I’d rather he’d have done that than he’s the one lying dead. It was in Amsterdam, Holland and he was being paid to look after someone – he was the muscle, the deterrent. Before he left on that job one of our mates had given him a gun with six bullets in. Dave asked if he had any more and he said, ‘Listen, mate, you’ve got six there. You miss, you’re in the wrong fucking job, mate.’

The bloke he was supposed to be looking after was shot right in front of him. Dave told me afterwards: ‘I’ve seen dead people before, but I’ve never had someone I’ve been talking to seconds before, lying on the floor in front of me. I knew the next thing would have been me. I’ve got the thing in my pocket that’ll make sure I get home to my missus. I’m sorry but I’m using it.’ And I’m glad he did. I’d rather someone else was lying dead than have to read Dave’s obituary in the paper.

The police never really forgave Dave for being so cocky when he got off on that
Bermondsey Boy
programme. When the court case was over he was asked, ‘Did you do it?’ and he said, ‘No comment – of course I did.’ They’ll never leave him alone.

He’s been up in court so many times. The worst was 1996. It was Friday 7 June – I remember because it was my birthday the following Monday.

Dave was at home. His friend came by the house with another boy called Mark, and said he was going to pick up his mate from the airport. It was a nice warm day. Dave said, ‘I’m not doing anything, I’ll come with you.’ He only went along for the ride.

He was wearing tartan shorts, a T-shirt, shoes with no socks and carrying a mobile phone. It wasn’t like he was dressed to go anywhere or do anything. He was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The bloke that they were going to pick up had imported cocaine.

Dave didn’t know that. All Dave had done was unknowingly introduce the two people who’d come up with the plan in the first place. Then he’d gone along to the airport just to keep his mate company. It was nothing to do with him.

But they were all nicked. Apart from the boy Mark, who’d gone to the airport with them. He’d nipped off to get a coffee or whatever, and come back to find them all getting nicked, so he ran off.

First I knew of it was Mark standing on the doorstep saying, ‘They’ve all been nicked.’ I just thought: Oh no no no. Straight away I knew that out of all of them that had been nicked, Dave would look like the one in control, the Mr Big, even though he really wasn’t.

I had to wait until the Monday to visit Dave, which was my birthday. I thought he was being held at Wormwood Scrubs. I picked up the wives and girlfriends of the others who’d been nicked with him and we drove up there. But unbeknownst to me, when Dave had come out on the wing at Wormwood Scrubs earlier that day, all the bad boys had been shouting out and cheering him, which hadn’t gone down well with the authorities. So he’d been put into solitary, then whisked down to Belmarsh. I only found that out once I got there. All the other wives went in but I had to go and sit round the back on the grass.

I was so down in the dumps, so depressed. I hated every one of the wives because they’d seen their blokes and I hadn’t, even though I knew it wasn’t their fault at all. I felt gutted that I’d missed Dave and the next visiting wouldn’t be for a few days.

I couldn’t wait to drop the others off and go home to be miserable by myself, but as I turned the corner and drove by our local pub, the Albion, I noticed something from the corner of my eye. It was like a sea of red just visible through the windows and door. As I got closer, I realised the entire pub was filled with red roses. From where he was in prison, Dave had still managed to send all these roses for my birthday – the pub was overflowing with roses, they were coming out of the door there was so many. That melted me. That’s the kind of man he is.