Powder Wars (14 page)

Sometimes he'd disappear for weeks, on bits of work he was taking care of, knowmean? Or he'd been nicked. The business was sound for him as well for alibis and that. Obviously, now he was on the firm and that, I'd vouch for him when the busies came asking where he was on such-and-such a date, but one time a private detective I knew turned up and said: ‘I believe you've said Haase was working for you on the day such-and-such a warehouse was robbed. Just to let you know we've got him on camera doing the job. You'll end up going inside yourself for perjury, if you are not careful.'

So I had to pass on that, knowmean? Meanwhile, his feud with the Ungis and Fitzys was hotting up good style. I'm in Caesar's one night and I gets a call from Haase asking if this Fitzy lad was in.

‘He's just left now,' I says, literally watching his cab get off.

Haase picked up his trail and followed. Then he jumped the lad in question and cut him up ruthlessly with a Stanley knife. He never used his fists. Haase repeatedly slashed him across the arse. It was all because this Fitzy lad had punched Haase's bird, Vera, in Black George's pub on Park Road. Then Haase went to prison on some charge. After he got out, I gave him £300 and told him that that was his stake in the business. There was no point him being involved in my legitimate businesses. He was too ontop and I was getting some big contracts at the time, which the likes of his reputation could jeopardise.

Six weeks after he was out I gets a visit from him. It was February 1980 and it was bitterly cold. I'd just won a big contract in Bootle to clean out this huge warehouse that'd just burnt down. Get paid, it was. Pure bundles. But it was murder working near the docks at that time of year, with the freezing winds and that coming in off've the Atlantic. So I was literally on site, in my overalls and that, taking care of business. Was enjoying being a well-off legitimate businessman, in all fairness. Meeting a different class of people. Straight-goers, other businessmen like my good self. Was feeling half-good about the achievements of my good self, in all fairness.

But one day John turns up with his main hombre Bernie Aldridge, who was Vera's brother, and says that he needs me as back-up to help him sort out two Ungi brothers. Haase is fuming. He's going off've his head saying how he's going to kill the Ungis and that. Fair enough, I thought, it saves me the hassle.

Bernie was trying to calm him down a touch. He was sound, Bernie, in all fairness. I knew him from being in the jug with him. He robbed warehouses in the early days, like me. He was a likeable fella, who just liked getting drunk with the lads and that. But Haase was always treating Bernie badly. Bernie never once slighted or betrayed him, but behind his back Haase would always call him ‘a piece of shit' and take him for a bit of a cunt. Order him around and that. I was a bit thingy about it, to be honest.

As far as the fight, I thought it was just gonna be a straightener with these Ungis. Just fists, iron bars and maybe the odd machete and that – no shooters, knowmean? So I grabs a couple of pickaxe hangles for good measure off've one of my wagons. But Haase is getting more and more angry. He then decides he wants to shoot everybody. He asks Johnny One Eye, who was working for me, to go and pick up a shooter from his house and to meet us in Kitchen Street, near the Dock Road.

I didn't mind this in all fairness. Haase shooting these lads and all. It'd be one less headache for me and if he was pulling the trigger, then there'd be no financial comebacks for my good self or Billy. Sound as, in my book. The Ungis had it coming to them, to be fair.

So I'm like that: ‘All right. Let's do it them before they do it to us.'

Haase found out that Joey Ungi was at a mechanic's garage owned by our old friend and top gobshite Tony Murray. When we gets there he and Johnny One Eye steam inside and started smashing the place up looking for them. John was dressed like he'd just walked out of Burton's window as usual. Tweed jacket, black kecks and a nice white shirt. Of course, they're ballied up and that.

It turns out that the Ungis had well fucked off by the time we got there. So Haase and One Eye were trying to scare Murray into telling them were they'd gone. First they smash up Murray's car. Then Haase was pointing the shotgun at his head threatening to blow him away. As usual Johnny One Eye gets impatient with the talk, grabs the single shooter off've Haase and blows a hole in Murray. He was aiming to kneecap him from the back of the legs, IRA-style, but he just ended up shooting him in the back of the leg. Blood everywhere, la. Murray's in bulk. Murray's sidekick, a feller called Desmond Fox, also gets a thrashing. They smashed his kneecaps in with an iron bar because they were busy reloading. All the while I'm stood outside in my ovies with the pickaxe hangles to make sure no one gets in. Suddenly, Haase and Johnny One Eye run out and we get off. I'm not arsed, by the way. This kind of thing, shootings and that, happened all the time.

In the car, I asked Haase why he'd flew off the hangle on this particular day, even though this feud had been going on for years.

‘They'd insulted me bird,' he says.

‘What? You've gone and plugged someone because they slagged off your tart.'

‘Yes,' he says. ‘They'd give her loads in a club in town. Had to be done, la, no back answers.'

Haase's bird was called Vera Aldridge, Bernie's sister. She was a grafter, a shoplifter, whose full-time job was to basically rob nice suits for Haase. They had a kid together. She was a good woman, sound and that, but she had a drinking problem. Often, when Haase was in the jug, she'd drop the kid off at ours and disappear for days on end, in the clubs in town and that. That was her way of coping with the stress of the lifestyle. Was not arsed myself about her letting off steam, but I did worry about her and the bin lid, to be truthful, on occasion, with the firewater and all.

Anyways, we thought no more of this shooting in the garage. It was one of them. Allday. I went back to my clearing out contract in Bootle. Haase went back to planning his bank capers. Little did we know, la. The thing blew up out of all proportion. I mean, out of all fucking proportion. You'd have thought we'd shot the president by the way the papers were going on.

Murray was rushed to hospital and a surgeon battled to save his leg. As though the cunt was
worth
saving. The papers made it into a big soap opera as though he was hanging onto his life by a thread and that he was just a nice feller who'd come a cropper. They described him as a garage boss. The busies said it was a big, mad gangland attack which they were going to stamp out. The papers were making out it was a fucking massacre or something. Was even on
Granada Reports
and that with that cunt Tony Wilson making out Liverpool was full of savages and that. Cheeky twat, that Anthony H. Wilson.

The busies said they were determined to get the fellers who did it. Bit over the top, in all fairness, in my book. Three days later Haase and Bernie get nicked and charged with attempted murder on Murray and GBH on Foxy. They were sent to Risley Remand Centre. They are looking at a total stretch, in all fairness. Not that Haase was arsed. He was totally unfazed by doing bird. But we felt that John was being hard done by. So we started plotting and scheming how to make this go away.

The most obvious solution was to sit down with the Ungi's and get Murray paid not to turn up in court. I could have straightened it out myself without any money changing hands. They owed me one for the other business. But it wasn't my problem – I never liked being in debt to anyone, especially for someone else's devilment. Going cap in hand to them would start a chain-reaction of doing each other favours. Not today, I thought. So I didn't mention it. In the end, Billy Grimwood got it sorted.

Billy summoned Murray to a meeting. Murray goes out of respect and all that carry on. Billy points at his leg, which is in bandages and plaster-cast and all that, and says if he turns up in court his whole body will need a fucking plaster-cast, knowmean? Plain as. Murray rolls over and tells him he ain't prepared to point the finger. Billy sweetened the poison by promising to do him a little favour he was asking about.

On the day of the court hearing in July Murray went missing, of course. The papers ran a story begging him to come forward and give evidence. They even had the prosecution barrister pleading with him in court to come back, saying that his leg would fall off within seven days if he didn't, as it had a big mad infection. Then they said he had peritonitis, which would kill him if he didn't get to a doctor fast, but Billy had made sure that he was well out of the frame. On the lam he was and not coming back until the case well and truly disappeared. The court said that if Murray didn't turn up within seven days then they'd discharge John and Bernie.

The busies are furious. They're going round the city turning people over and putting the heat on people to try and find Murray. They're saying that Haase had had him kidnapped not to turn up or that Murray was a lamist because Billy Grimwood was putting the scares on him. The bongos were in overdrive.

With this in mind, so as not to bring it ontop for Haase, Murray is wheeled out of hiding and told to give himself up to the busies the next day. He goes to his solicitor and told them that he was defo going in the box before the seven-day court extension expired. The busies are made-up now. Making sure he doesn't leave their side and that and rubbing their hands saying that it's a definite ten for John.

They're like that: ‘Get paid. We've been after this cunt for years. Now we've got him bang to rights.'

But on the day of the court Murray goes and has a freak accident, doesn't he? Can you believe that shit? Yes I can. Why? Because it was all done on the instructions of Billy. The car crash happened at dawn (no witnesses) as Murray was on the way to court. Unlucky or what? But instead of going into the box, he's rushed to ozzie with his shot-up legs even more mangled. Pumped full of drugs by the docs. Result: he's in no fit state physically or mentally to give evidence in a court of law. Get paid. Game over.

Don't know whether Murray knew he was going to be a crash-test dummy, but the night before the accident I was told to keep tabs on him as he went around town on the piss. He came into the Lucky Club. Me and Mick Cairns followed him in there. We kept an eye on him from the next room until he got off home.

When the busies are told in court that Murray won't be turning up they are totally sinkered by this. The papers call it a drama. The busies bomb down to the hospital and virtually try and drag him from his bed to court. But the docs are like that, telling them to fuck off dragging him back in, saying he's a fucking sick fella and how dare they and that. In the end, they have to leave it. In a last-ditch attempt to keep Haase behind bars, the most senior busies in the city pleaded with the court not to drop the case, but they're told no way, the case is discharged. Haase and Bernie walk.

Haase was getting a reputation as someone who could beat cases. After the Murray shooting, the Ungis were more low-key and let their heavies do the dirty work. One of them, a big feller called Eddie Palmer, used to come in Caesar's. In fairness, he was a bit of goer, a big feller with a menacing air about him. Evil, he was, to be truthful. Mind you, I never got no trouble off've him. When he came in, it was one of them: ‘I know who you are. I know who you run with and I don't give two fucks. Give me behaviour and there'll be untold, knowmean? End of.'

He was like that: ‘OK, la. No sweat and that. Just out for a quick bevvy and that.'

Talking that way was showing respect to guys like that. They liked to know where they stood. So he respected me back for it, so it was allday.

A short while later Palmer was stabbed to death in a bar-room brawl. All the gangland caper – the stabbings and the shootings, the tie-ups, etc. weren't always bad for business, to be fair. In fact, you could turn it to your advantage if you wanted, to make a raise. What it did was make my good self totally indispensable to likes of the fellers who owned the clubs. All this random savagery put the shits up them good style and they needed me to protect them from it. Hence the protection rackets. But it's a bit more subtle than that, in all fairness.

It's more like what politicians use to start a war. It's a phoney pretext. The fear factor. I used every little battle and threat to increase my influence on the club, to run the place but without actually taking over it. No way I wanted the hassle of managing a gaff like that, but I was interested in maximising the dough I could squeeze out of there. Anyways, there was no way someone like me could get a licence for a place like that. Caesar's was turning into a goldmine and I was makin' sure that I continued to make good bunce out of it.

Sometimes, after a particularly bad attack, the owners would panic and come to me and say: ‘Paul, we need you to run this.'

‘Sound,' I says, ‘as long as I gets paid, not a problem.'

One such incident happened in 1982. The management had brought in a feller called Dennis Kelly as a doorman. But one night he flew off've the hangle and murdered one of the punters, a newsagent called Billy Osu. Billy was a bit of a bully, but all right, knowmean? It brought a lot of heat on the club. The police launched a massive manhunt. An incident like that could get you shutdown, no back answers.

Only a few months before, the owner, a feller called David Tonner, had asked the busies whether he could turn Caesar's into a pub and change the licence and that. This was to cool the aggro down a bit by deterring the late-night gangster crowd. But the busies fucked him off because they wanted to keep track of comings and goings which the signing-in process did.

Dennis had some beef with this Osu. Literally, it was over some throwaway banter on the door and that. Osu had insulted Kelly or looked at him bad, but even that could get you killed in the club. That's how easy it was for a guy to get whacked. Everyone was getting killed for no reason. Kelly and his mate Austin McCormick go looking for him. They drive down to a bar in Chinatown called the Kowloon. They hit him with a hammer and a bottle and Osu was stabbed three and a half inches into his heart. Osu didn't even know he was dying because these types of fights were normal. He jumped in a cab to go home but the driver took him to A & E instead. He died there.