Powder Wars (13 page)

Meanwhile, violence was spiralling out of control all over the place. People would get crippled and coma'ed and chopped up for nothing at all. It was natural. Like driving or going to buy a sandwich. Beating someone until they went blind or brain damaged or choked on their own broken bones and teeth was a daily occurrence. No one got caught. It was just business. It meant more dough. So what? Leave them where they fell. Are they dead? Don't know. Don't care. Fuck 'em off. Get paid.

I took over the security on a string of massage parlours. Was screwing good punt out of it, to be fair. They were always getting heisted and had off or the punters would shag the girls without paying. So after the clubs I'd go and sit with the girls and use the gym and the sauna and what have you.

One of them was owned by a feller called Dick the Snip. He was a barber. One night a punter refused to pay. Gets the call. Snipper's like that to the terrified brass: ‘Keep him there. We're on our way down. Suck his cock some more, just don't let him go.'

Little did this punter know that we had a good system organised, a quick-response so that I was there even before this flash little twerp had his kecks on. I only wanted to give the feller a hiding and get his dough. But Dick the Snip starts smashing his head in with a baseball bat. Furious, he was and foaming at the mouth. Ripping his hair out and kicking his teeth in. The guy is screaming for his mam. The brasses are wailing in pain just watching it.

If that wasn't enough, Ritchie Mellor, Dick the Stick, who was partners with me in this vice-security venture, runs in with a villain called Rodney Brown. Dick the Stick pulls out a big, fat butcher's knife and stabs the punter in the back and belly. He's running the blade into his body like a fucking jackhammer and slashing him in the face and neck for good measure.

I was always amazed, to be fair, in these skenarios, just how much the human body can take. Most people would have been dead, no back answers. But in one last burst for survival this feller springs to his feet and runs for the door and straight through a reinforced plate-glass window. Cut to bits, he was. I don't know how he did it. It was like fight or flight, adrenaline or something. We just stood there, mouths open. That's that. Dick the Stick is laughing like a hyena. I was indifferent, just looking at the knife, dripping with claret and that. All of us were breathless. There's blood and shite all over the place.

‘I like to leave marks,' Dick the Stick says.

Funny thing happened though. I got talking to one of the brasses and she told me that she used to work on the streets until it became too dangerous. We were laughing, bearing in mind what had just happened. She said that this little team of black lads were going round terrorising the brasses and the punters and that in the red light in Toxteth. Taxing them and so on. But she says that recently they'd been stuck down for two years now, so she was considering going back on the streets and that.

‘Who are they?' I says.

‘They're only a pair of scallies. Curtis Warren and Johnny Phillips. D'y know them?'

‘No. Should I?' I didn't know it yet but one of these lads, Curtis Warren, would have a very big effect on my life in the future. At that time he was just a rag-arsed scally. He went on to be yowge [huge]. I mean really
yowge
in the drugs game.

There was a lot of violence in the air. It seemed as though everywhere I went there was smashed heads and broken bones. Trouble followed me round. For instance, the next night I was having a game of darts. Out of nowhere this feller called Willy accuses me of kopping for his bird. He's drunk. He's got me confused with another feller called Nick. But I was so wound up that he'd interrupted me darts that I dragged him outside and used his head as a human football. I just booted him until he fell into a coma and then battered his head against a car boot. I was in a trance. All's I could see was red and rage.

My mate grabbed me and goes: ‘You've done him now.' I threw him on the floor and left him for dead. That's that.

9

John Haase

One night at Caesar's Palace Paul had a chance meeting with a gangster called John Haase. Haase was an armed robber who led a notorious gang of raiders dubbed the Transit mob, a name derived from their trademark use of Ford Transit vans. The gang terrorised Britain in the '70s and early '80s, targeting post offices and security vans. It was the beginning of an extraordinary friendship.

PAUL: One night a man called John Haase was trying to get in Caesar's. That night I met him for the first time, but he would go on to have a very big effect on my life over the next 20 years. I was in Caesar's doing business with the owners. There were two lads on the door downstairs and I was sorting out a problem upstairs. The bell went, signalling trouble downstairs. Probably a crew of tweed-clad scallywags trying to blag a late one after a midweek away somewhere. But the owner and the other heavies upstairs wouldn't go down, because of who this John Haase was and what he could do. Terrified, they asked me to sort it out.

When I got down there, there was a feller called Johnny Oates, one of the lads, with another smartly dressed mush, this John Haase, giving all sorts of abuse to the girl on the door till. My two lads on the door were stood off as though this feller in the suit was some kind of untouchable bad lad or something. He was a notorious shooter merchant who would think nothing of coming back and shooting up the place, so they says.

So I asks him what the problem is. He turns to me and tells me to fuck off. Here we go, I thought. Going to have to administer some sleeping tablets to this young fellow. But I notices he's got a plaster-cast on his leg and think twice, seeing as it wouldn't quite be cricket, notorious shooter merchant or not. Obviously, he's a bit of a player so I just says to him: ‘Listen I don't give a fuck who you are but you are going to have to leave now.'

With that I chases him from the club. When I turn to the lads they're like that: ‘D'you know who that is? Pure bad one that, Oscar. Should have given him a walkover.'

‘Not arsed,' I says. ‘Who is this fella, by the way?'

‘John Haase, la.'

It turns out that he's supposed to be some kind of rooting-tooting armed robber or something. Hardcore and all that. About half an hour later there's a knock on the door again. It's Johnny Oates.

‘All right, Johnny, are you coming in?'

He says: ‘Yeah, sorry about before and that, Oscar. But . . .'

‘Yeah, no sweat, Johnny. Allday and that.'

Then I sees this Haase behind him. I says to Johnny: ‘I don't give a fuck about you but he's not coming in with you.'

Johnny's like that: ‘Come 'ead, Oscar, la,' etc. etc.

After a few minutes of this pleading and that I says to Johnny: ‘Listen, if he apologises to the girl on the till and the lads on the door, then I might consider it.'

Only did it because Johny Oates' dad was mates with my auld feller and that. I can see this Haase is fuming. This is a big humiliation for him, to be fair. He's a big feller in the scheme of things, could just tell, knowmean, and this is pure doing his head in, but he says he's sorry and they go in. He wasn't in there long before he gets off again. On the way out, he gives it a big, mad ‘We'll meet again'. Trying to be chilling and what have you with the big gangster veiled threat.

I'm like that: ‘I hope so.'

With that he disappeared into the night.

Five months later me and Mick Cairns are having a little drink in the Fairfield. It was a nice little boozer, which we used to have little meets, no hassle and that. No one went in there. No gangsters, no doormen, no nothing, just ordinary working fellers. By that time the busies were on our case badly. Putting surveillance on us at every opportunity, nicking us for little things. So the Fairfield was a little den for meets where no one knew where we were.

But one night Mick and I go in and it's like a gangsters' convention. It's like a mini fucking Appalachian for the Scouse Mafia, knowmean? There's the Hughsie brothers, a feller called Tommy Smith, this cockney gangster (who later turned out to be a big grass; who'd been put into them by the busies), a few other notorious scallies, and lo and behold this John Haase is there, too.

Straightaway me and Mick are looking at each other thinking: ‘What the fuck is this? These are going to bring it right ontop for us in here.' Plus we didn't like the cockney straightaway. Definitely, skewwiff him, la, knowmean? Had him sussed staightaway. We happened to be there 'cos we were planning a one-off, a bit of graft which we had come across, to tell you the truth. So we were using the Fairfield as our most secret and low-key HQ and that.

So we're looking over at this crew aghast. Tommy Smith spies us, cutely, not looking too happy, puts his ciggie out, looks up through the swirls of smoke and bombs over. Shakes our hands and all that gangster carry on. I'd known Tommy for years. He was sound. Allday, he is, Tommy. He was a handsome bastard, Tommy, though he was always sullen and reserved. I liked that. He'd been through the mill over the years and I had time for him.

At an early age he was cut up, his tendons beneath the knees were severed. Later he was shot by the busies while attempting to rob a PO'ey [Post Office] with the Hughsies. But talk about front. He sued the busies and got compo, la, after the busies were forced to reveal that they had targeted him deliberately. Cheeky or what? He married into our family later on, to a girl called Deborah, who was Joan Mellor's daughter. Dick the Stick became his driver.

So he bombs over. Straightaway he knows there's been a diplomatic faux pas here. Next minute the Hughsies mosey over.

‘What are yous doing down here?' I says.

‘We're having a meeting,' Hughsie replies, as though it's the most natural thing in the world.

‘Listen, it's not the fucking Holiday Inn conference centre. Not in here you're not. This is my patch and you're bringing it bang ontop with the busies and that.'

I didn't want them bringing waves down to our patch with the auld bill and that. It was that touchy with the busies, at the time, in all fairness. Get to hear about a little meeting involving several well-known community leaders and next minute they want to know what's going on in the boozer. So they start watching it and next thing is we're fucked. And I couldn't be doing with that at the time. As well as my one-off with Mick, I was doing a few little warehouse robberies all to myself on the sly. Is right and that.

So the Hughsies are like that: ‘Did not know, la. Sorry and that. We're off, Oscar. Say no more.'

‘Anyways, what are you doing with him?' I says.

I was looking over at Haase. He was dressed in a suit talking to the cockney, who was also sporting a whistle. Haase is looking over at me. I didn't like the look of the cockney at all. I knew that Haase's head was wrecked because I knew all these so-called Top Boys. Not only that, they were suckholing me and all, too. He was gobsmacked that I knew them and that I did not give a shit about them. Little signals mean a lot. Underworld office politics and that.

When I first came in he probably thought he was intimidating me, being with these cronies and that, but it purely backfired. Trivial I know, but loaded with meaning if you know where I'm going? So on the way out he slides over, shakes my hand and apologises for the carry on at the nightclub and this little faux pas that was going on as well.

‘No sweat and that,' I says as I watch him get into a cab outside.

As I says, the Hughsies later discovered the cockney was a grass. I knew I was right and it justified me overreacting to make them fuck off from the boozer. It was a golden rule never to discuss work in front of strangers. Careless talk costs lives – ironically in this case his own. Needless to say, shortly after that it was discovered that he was a grass and the cockney was zapped. The brakes on his ‘motor' were cut and the steering was ragged. Very professionally, mind you, so no one would know. Pure Princess Di-style, knowmean? After a night out, he went round a roundabout near a nightclub called the Coconut Grove and crashed. By the time the busies got to him, he was dead. It had to be done that way, made to look like an accident, so the busies didn't get suspicious. After all, they'd put him onto his killers in the first place.

A few weeks later I was out with Joey Duvall and we bumped into Haase. He was bevvied and we got talking. He told me that he was constantly at war with the Ungis. That they were causing him untold and that. As I got to know him I began to like him. He was a shotgun merchant, an armed robber into post offices and security vans and that. Give him his due, he was a pro. Not one of these chancers. People were afraid of him. Physically he was nothing, but people were afraid of what he could do with the hardware.

At the time, I was getting more and more involved with my legitimate businesses. The tipper wagons were turning a profit. Basically, it was shite removing. Taking away rubbish from households and business and tipping it in the countryside. Of course, we fly-tipped as much as we could so we didn't have to pay landfill and that. We tipped thousands of tonnes in the disused docks down the Southend. Cunts we were, but, in all fairness, we knew no better.

We had adverts in the Yellow Pages and all the papers. A good few wagons and a few lads working for us. Me and Mick both took £60 a day in drawings and left the rest in to expand the business. John Haase then asked me if he could invest in the business. He said the busies were on his case and he wanted to cover his money, so people wouldn't question his illegal income. So he put some dough in the kitty. It was only £170 but it was just a token gesture. In between robbing post offices and that he'd turn up for work, as though to prove he was a regular blue-collar guy, but he'd wear a suit. Even though it was shite removing he'd wear an expensive suit and an ironed white shirt and that. He insisted on rubbing barrier cream on his hands to keep them smooth. Vain wasn't in it. Mind you, he did graft. I'll give him that.