Powder Wars (10 page)

After that the business got a bit out of hand, knowmean? We began to get people ringing us up card-marking us, where there were new building sites and that. Cocky watchmen, wagon drivers, even workies who were desperate for an early dart 'cos they wanted to go the match. Having the site screwed was their perfect outro. A good excuse to down tools and spend the afternoon on the piss. All hands were phoning them in: ‘There's a load of girders due in to such-and-such a site at four bells or whatever.'

We'd be waiting for them. No sooner than they had been lifted off've the delivery truck, we have them off. Me and Mick Cairns would go down, if no one else was around, on these on-specs. I lifted the girders onto the wagon with my own hands. Once you've got the bed of steel on the wagon, with a layer of girders, and it was steel on steel from then on, it was allday sliding them on. Get off. Get paid.

I was making a hell of a lot of dough. Each lorry load was a grand. It was a 24/7 operation. I'd just be getting my head down. It was four in the morning. I'd been on the door that night and the phone goes. One night it was Snowball, one of the lads, who was also a relative of mine: ‘I've got a forklift truck on the back of the wagon. We've just had it off and I want to stash it in your yard.'

No sweat. Drove down to my scrappy, burned the paint off, resprayed it and resold it. There was a big market in robbed plant – JCBs, cement mixers, cranes – you name it. Mainly because a lot of these big building firms and plant-hire companies were basically tight bastards and loved getting jarg gear on the cheap.

Then we had four huge drain cleaners away. Those are those big lorries like the wagons which the council use to sweep the streets, but the thing with gear like that is that it's super specialist, knowmean? There's only so many buyers in the market for industrially sized drain cleaners. You know that they're going to end up on some fucking borough council in Northumbria, so you can't charge the earth, knowmean? 'Cos someone is going to have to re-plate them and all that carry on, before they are sold on to the fucking Grimsby Council Clerk of the Works, with me? So I only got £1,500 out of that. Stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap. End of.

Another good earner was robbed lorries. Big ten tonners, low loaders, big vans and that kind of thing. I got the idea after a few of my mates, who were hijackers, started to bring in the lorries they'd highwayed off from somewhere, for me to cut up, so as to destroy the evidence. They were always brand new. Shame it was, la, but we'd just cut them up piece by piece with the burners, sell the metal for scrap and engine for spare parts. It'd take two or three days to dice a wagon into little bits. We'd make about £1,000 off've each wagon if we were lucky.

But then a lot of people started asking us to do it. Pure snowballed. Mates in the haulage industry for insurance, for every reason. We had that many we had to rent a big, covered yard at the back of a garage owned by a friend of the family. And we got a production line going using a few lads and that. Then we developed a system whereby we didn't have to destroy the whole wagon. We just cut the big boxes off've the back and sell the front bit separately. It was a good system. We sold them to farmers in Wales who would never get nicked with them driving them around on their land and that.

It got so that the hijackers wouldn't even sell the load before they give the lorry to us. I'd just stand there with a clipboard backing the lorries in, making a note of the contents. Davey Knox turned up with a huge lorry full of cloth. He copped for a load of very expensive silk from China. I cut the rolls of silk and cotton up and sold them to a fence. Then I cut the back of the lorry up and sold the cab to another feller. Paid Davey in cash. One stop service, it was. The lads were made up.

Mick Cairns turned up with a refrigerated lorry full of New Zealand lamb. Sold the meat to a big butcher we knew and cut the lorry up. Everyone was happy. The best week we had we cut three wagons up, one after the other. Then I asked Snowball to start going out to rob them himself to feed the production line we'd set up. He had about five off, one after the other. We was making good punt out of it. Then we went a step further.

We knew where we could cop for several brand new Volvo wagon cabs. Known as tractors in the trade. They're the lorries that are at the front of articulated lorries. They were sitting in the yard of a wagon firm on the Dock Road. Had them priced up. The total haul was worth £140,000, if you were buying them new out of the showroom. Easy peasy, it was. Over the wall, broke the lock on the gates and drove them out, in a little convoy. Got them into my yard and battered the phones to get a buyer.

Rang round the haulage moguls I knew, but they were like that: ‘No way, Paul. They're too ontop being brand spankers and that. Every Volvo north of Birmingham is getting a tug already. They're looking for them.'

I knew I had to get rid of them quickly. Otherwise I'd have to cut them up with the burners and get the scrap value. Which was a sickener, by the way, with these being premium artics and that. I was in the yard when I got a call off Billy Grimwood. He told me he was in the Crow's Nest, one of the boozers in town he'd took over, and this fence was saying that he could get rid of the Volvo wagons.

Went down to see this feller. He was giving it loads, saying that he knew a big haulage firm in London who would take them off us for £40,000. This feller seemed too keen, knowmean? As though he was trying to impress me and Billy with this big mad London deal, but the meter was on, la. It was only a matter of time before the busies would turn the yard over so I had to show some commitment.

The feller said that we'd have to drive them down to London there and then. So that night I drove one and Snowball drove another. A-roads and all of that, to keep a low profile. Got one of the lads to follow us down in the car to make sure we was all right and that. But when we get there there were no cockneys to meet us. This feller says he'll have to run round to get the buyers to come and see us.

I was like that: ‘For fucks sake.' So we parked them in this nice, quiet street well out of the way, and went to get our heads down at a mate of ours. I fucking hated crashing like this in London. Roughing it. Waking up with a hangover on someone's floor, like as though I was going to Wembley or whatever. I felt grim and lost. I just wanted to do the deal and get off.

Twenty-four hours later still no show. I went back to have a vidi at the tractors to make sure they're all right, and lo and fucking behold, the busies have got onto them. Pure under surveillance, they were. Just a little car with two plain-clothes busies well up this suburban road, but I was onto them straightaway. We'd also got one of the lads to keep an eye on them. He said that there'd been people sniffing around them the night before. Either the fence had set us up or his London pals were turning him over. Either way, la, I was extremely bored by all this. Telling you, la, but I said fuck all. There was no point.

The next day me, Snowball and the fence got in the car. I told Snowball to get on the M1 and get back to Liverpool. Snowball was driving. I was in the front passenger seat. It was a Nissan Sunny – Japanese cars had just started taking off over here and that. It was small and super low-key. The fence was in the back seat. In fairness, he didn't look guilty. He just kept going on that he was sorry and all, too, about his fucking about.

As soon as we got on the motorway I turned round and just laid into the cunt. Proper fucking punching him, I were. Proper haymakers and digs and that. Just holding his head so he couldn't move and twatting his face repeatedly and without no mercy. He was fucking screaming and crying. His legs were hitting the roof, leaving like indentures in the polystyrene roof lining. Crying for his mum, he was, this prick. He knew he was going to die, in fairness, was fighting for his life, to be honest.

I was like that: ‘You cheeky cunt. You not only lose me £40,000 and grass me up, but now you're putting marks on the roof of my car. You cunt.'

I'm furious with the prick by now. Proper lost it, I did. Snowball now joined in. He was doing 70 mph. I remember thinking, these Sunnys are sound, la. Nifty and that. He had his right hand on the wheel, but was lashing out at this feller with his left arm. Pulling his hair and that and ragging his nose. Next thing I say: ‘Open the fucking door to the middle lane.'

Snowball's like that: ‘Fuck that. You'll kill the cunt.'

I'm like: ‘Just do it, will you, you prick.'

I'd had enough of this fellow in the back now. Blubbering and that. There's no way he'd be staying in the car for the next three hours and that, all the way back home, but I can see Snowball's half thingy about it. And next minute he's like: ‘I can't reach the hangle and that.'

I'm thinking, ‘It's only a fucking small car, you shithouse. You're not even trying there.' So I opens the back passenger door on my side. By this time, I've got one leg over the front seats and I'm half in the back. There are families, driving past and that. Teams of Indians in minibuses and that, on the motorway, like you used to get. All astonished at this caper going on in the car and I'm just carrying on wellying him hard up the arse.

Kicked him out onto the hard shoulder, I did. Watched him out the back window, la. In bulk, he was. Rolling over dead fast, but his arm and legs smashing on the ground even faster. Flailing, they were, uncontrollably. Pure fucking splattered goodo, he was. We were doing 70 mph, by the way. Laughing, I was, in all honesty. Hysterically. There was loads of cars behind. Everyone saw what was going on. It was ontop to death, but I could not give a fuck. We just carried on fucking going as though nothing had happened. I was reading the paper and that.

When I got back I had murder with Grimwood. Could not let this little escapade go, in all fairness. Was the first time I stood up to him properly. I was half fucking going to do him as well. He could have brought my whole operation ontop and got me serious time. For all I knew it might have been a set up from the word go. For all I know the busies might have been onto me for a while and knew about all the other jobs and this was the grand finale. The sting, to get the evidence first hand. I knew I could take Billy in a one-on-one and I was going to do it then.

I was looking at him. He'd come down to my yard for the steward's and all that, being all ‘I can't believe it' and all that baloney, but he looked half pathetic, in all honesty. For the first time I noticed that he looked old. All the time he'd served over the years was taking its toll. His suits didn't look that great anymore. He'd passed his sell by, in all fairness. Times were a changin' and there was no room no more for these Kray clones anymore. Trading off their tales of derring-do and their daft overcoats and that. Their idiosyncrasies and all. Modern villainy was about grafting hard and getting on your bike.

Billy was getting sloppy, to be truthful. He was too used to waiting for things to come to him and now that it was drying up, he was taking chances on pricks like the fence, to make the numbers up. Was drinking a bit too much for my liking and all and he was surrounding himself with gangster ghouls, phoneys and yes men. Gobshites, the lot of them.

As he was jabbering on I was half-thinking of just twatting him there and then, to shut the cunt up. I spied a nice iron bar about six foot away if he proved to be a bit more tasty than his demeanour of late had suggested. But deep down I knew doing him in would just cause untold. Pure beefs, it'd lead to, no two ways. Not only back home, mind you, but in London and that, where he still had a few be-suited community leaders on his side. They used to meet up at their big mad gangster funerals and that. He loved all that palaver Billy. Years later he went to the Krays' funeral where Johnny Nash was pallbearer. In truth, in the end, I could not be arsed doing Billy in. Just left it, I did. I said to him: ‘You are full of shit. Stay out of my fucking yard.' And with that, I fucked him off.

Business carried on as usual after that. Builders used to ring us up: ‘I need a caravan for a site. Can you get us one?'

‘Of course, no sweat.'

I robbed a couple of these big fuck-off caravans they used as offices and digs for the workies and that. Could not believe it, la. Sold one for £3,000 – that was nearly enough for a house at the time. So I told Snowball to have off as many as he could. When we couldn't get the big ones off the sites, he'd rob normal size ones from outside of people's houses. Cunt's trick, I know, but as I says, we had no regard for nothing, in all honesty.

Snowball would suss it out on someone's path and that and just tow it away in the middle of the night. I'd get a call at four in the morning, open up the yard and he'd drive it in. The next day we'd change all the locks, burn the numbers off and tow them down to Plymouth. We had a contact down there who'd put it in the local paper and get rid. Mostly we'd get grands here and there, but sometimes for a good one we'd get £2,500. Was good bunce, in all fairness, considering it was just caravans and that. It was all money in your backbin, knowmean?

The Scrapman's Gang was making good money. It had been good to all those involved: nice houses were being bought, cars, exotic holidays, golf clubs – all that carry on. We were also spending a lot on going out – pissing grands and grands up the wall. Got into being bits of playboys and that. The kiddies around town and that. Ten-day benders were not uncommon – especially if we'd had a good touch. I didn't go home for weeks. Was out shagging all kind. Getting totally slaughtered.

At about this time I thought it was a good idea to knock it on the head for a while. Were starting to attract a bit of attention, in all fairness. Busies were sniffing round the yard and that. It was time for a bit of a long break, in all fairness – from the robbing at least.