Powder Wars (26 page)

The match had an air of the comic book fight about it. Grimes, like an ageing superhero, pitched against his old friend turned archrival and evil super villain, in a battle between good and evil. But that is where the fantasy ended. The bitter, cold reality was that Grimes would have to risk his life every day in one of the longest running, most dangerous and technically sophisticated undercover operations in the history of British law enforcement.

If Haase even suspected that Grimes was a plant, Customs officers were sure that he would ‘disappear' instantly, never to be seen again. His assassins would come with smiling faces, as his friends, probably Haase himself, and Paul would have no idea of the fate that awaited him except that it most certainly would involve torture and end with death. Everyone on the team, including Paul, recalled the tragic fate of supergrass Roy Grantham who had previously crossed Haase. Grantham allegedly committed suicide in very mysterious circumstances. No one doubted Grimes was taking a terrifying risk.

The first difficult task was to get Paul ‘in' to Haase. The infiltration would be risky. Paul had had zero contact with Haase for over ten years, since well before the Warren trial. Would Haase have heard the rumours that Paul had been the informant who led to Warren's downfall? Would he have got specific intelligence about Paul's role as a supergrass from the corrupt officials he had on the payroll? Would he have Paul checked out? Would he bring Paul into his inner circle or keep him at arm's length?

The success of the operation would depend on Paul's skill as an undercover investigator and on his ability to deceive Haase and win his trust. They also needed a lot of luck. Which luckily they got. The start of the operation was blessed by a fortuitous twist of fate.

PAUL: It was pure luck that got us into John Haase. It just started out with a chance meeting and I took it from there. Million-to-one, it was.

In 1997 I was working as a security guard for a firm called Sovereign. They were a good firm run by an ex-army feller. I'd been working for them for about four or five years after the Warren trial. I wore a pair of black nylon kecks, a bit shiny from over-washing, and a pair of Dr. Martens that had seen better days. I looked like a grim version of a busie.

It was as though my former life as a gangster had been brainwashed from me completely. I was now a totally reformed and reprogrammed member of society. I was Alex from
Clockwork Orange
after going through Ludoviko treatment. If a scallywag in a Ford Probe (baseball cap skewed insolently to one side) gave me road rage, I'd smile nervously and turn the other cheek.

To all intents and purposes I was now a fully fledged member of working-class society. I knew my place. Pure sheep, knowmean? Getting ragged by my boss, the taxman and any other cunt that wanted to have a go. I winced away from violence and crime and wanted for nothing more than a Sky subscription and a Ford Sierra. Of a Saturday Night I watched
Casualty
and of a Sunday I went to B&Q. If I was lucky I'd cop for a Big Mac Value Meal on the way home. I was Tony Blair's Sierra Man. No fucking back answers.

I'd given up the life of devilment completely. A lot of it was because I'd got involved with a girl from Hoylake. She didn't like gangsters at all. So I sat on the nest with her waiting for something to happen. That was until Haase came along again. I wanted this cunt badly. This one was purely personal. Haase had been a friend to me. He was one of my own. Old school, he was. Staunch as they come . . . or so I fucking thought.

Unknown to me he'd got into the gear, the brown, la. It was like finding out that your da had been fiddling with the kiddies and that. It was that bad. I'd first found out that John was mixed up with the brown when he got nicked in '93 or '94 with the 80-odd kis. I had to read the
Echo
twice. John Haase? Scag? No way, la. But it was bang on. For me that was the final nail in the coffin for the villains in Liverpool.

I had heard bits about what had gone on afterwards, with Michael Howard and all that caper, but I had blanked myself off from it all. I'd heard that he'd turned the Government over to get out of jail. But I'd also been told that Customs were still interested in him.

At the time I was guarding shops, stopping smackheads robbing razors and that. I moved all around for security reasons but sometimes I had to go to Liverpool. I didn't like working in Liverpool for obvious reasons, but there was no way I was going to allow them cunts, Warren and co., to dictate my life. I was in constant fear of being popped. But I'd made a decision and I had to live with it.

One day I was doing a Sunday stint in Netto in a place called Garston in Liverpool. Vera Aldridge comes into Netto. Vera was John Haase's ex-wife. Even though John had got a new bird, Debbie, Vera was still very close to him. She was very loyal to him. If you said a bad word about him she'd knock you out. She was a tough girl. They'd only split up because Haase had spent so much time in jail and Vera had hit the bottle out of loneliness. She was in Netto buying some cider. I didn't recognise her at first. But she come over and said: ‘Paul.'

There was a bit of small talk and that. ‘How's the job?' and all that carry on. I got talking to her.

‘How's John?' I asked.

‘Yeah. He's sound.' Blah, blah, blah. As she was getting off I said: ‘Tell him I was asking about him.'

In all honesty, I knew he'd go for that. Curiosity killed John, knowmean? Always had, kidder. Lo and behold, the following Sunday he turns up in Netto. Is right and that Grimesy lad. Myself had not lost the magic touch.

I got talking to him and all that. He said sorry about your lad and that carry on, referring to our Jason. Fucking cheek of him. Here's fucking Britain's biggest brown merchant flooding the fucking nation with tackle and he's saying sorry for killing my son. Mad, these drug dealers, aren't they? But I said fuck all. Did not mention about him in prison and then getting out or nothing like that.

At the end of the day I was still Haase's mate in a weird way. I was actually half-glad to see him. Old mates and all that. But it came down to drugs again. I knew he had been down for drugs and that disgusted me. He'd stepped over the line and got into something he'd never dealt with. When I went to work for him it was even worse. He used to brag about it and all that carry on.

I could see he thought I was on my arse working in Netto like a prick and I knew he'd play the big gangster card, James Cagney and all that ‘I can take you away from all this'. He couldn't resist it. I could read him like a book.

Next minute it's: ‘If you need a job give us a ring.'

Gives me his phone number as though he's handing me a passport back into the big time and gets off. Get paid. Haase told me that he had set up Big Brother security. But he said he'd only managed to get a couple of contracts, nothing major. No doubt because he was too busy running amok. He needed someone who knew the business, someone he could trust.

The next day I phoned my handler at Customs. Was half-buzzing, in all fairness.

‘He's offered me a job. What do you reckon?' I said.

He said: ‘It's up to you but I'll think about it. If you find anything out. Definitely.'

I knew they were umming and arrhing. They were worried. The offer had caught us on the hop. Out of the blue. They were worried about my safety and the political fall-out if it came ontop. What I basically said then was that if I go and work for him, and find out anything that's not kosher, are you interested? And he said yes, but he put a rider on it.

He said: ‘It's up to you what you do, Paul. But we'll take it on board and we'll monitor what you find out.'

That was their way of covering their arses. Pure Hutton-speak, knowmean? So a couple of weeks later I phoned Haase up and he offered me bits of work, working on sites, doing security. Cash in hand and all that. I ran a couple of sites. It was tedious work. Just sitting around in shitty cabins with only a kettle for company. John was nowhere to be seen. He was back at the office, running his rackets over the phone or out doing people in.

The first office was in Crosby, then after a few months he moved it to an old mortuary next to the docks. It was a fitting place. Haase was so paranoid that he had CCTV cameras put everywhere; in his own office, on the stairs leading to the door, to watch comings and goings, and on the car park. He was like Tony Montana in
Scarface
.

That's where I needed to be – at the Dock right next to him. But it was early days. There was no way he was going to let me close to the action straight away. He'd let me stew first on the sites until he trusted me to bring me in. If I hinted that I wanted to be more involved, he would have suspected. It was going to be a case of slowly, slowly, catchy monkey on this one. I'd have to worm my way in. I was constantly on the scan for ways of rising up the ladder, 'cos that meant getting closer to John.

There was a supervisor there, but he wasn't doing his job properly. I wangled it so that John gave me his job. Snidey, I know, but all in the name of truth and justice! Then I started to bring in bigger and better contracts, persuade the clients to take more men, things like that. At first Big Brother only had three contracts; a DIY store, a flat conversion and the Stanley Dock Market. But soon it was 20, including good payers like McDonald's. We had the contract for the Heritage Market – the biggest indoor market in Europe. That was 367 man-hours a week, 22 guards on Sunday, worth £10,000-a-month. The thing is, the more work I got him, the more money he made, the more he started trusting me, telling me things about the criminal side of the operation.

At first he just mentioned he was doing ciggies, smuggling them from abroad, but even though they were £1 million-plus deals and he was making as much from them as the drugs, I wasn't arsed with all that. Personality-wise, he'd turned into a tyrant. He'd done so much time, he'd gone crazy. Did not give a shit about authority or anyone. He'd hit the self-destruct button.

It took me about six months before he invited me to get involved with the real villainy. And, la, was I surprised?

23

Round-the-Clock Rackets

Paul was shocked at the sheer intensity of Haase's criminal force. Having been a gang boss himself, Paul was no stranger to how an organised crime unit worked. To keep the kiddies fed, there had to be a production-line mentality. But this was in a different league altogether. This was the General Motors of gangsterism. It defied belief.

PAUL: The first time I come across Haase up to no good was just on the off chance – it was a minor thing.

One day I walked in the office about half eight in the morning. Haase was sitting at his desk cleaning guns. I just looked at him and he started laughing. I went to the offices a few more times and took a note of the crew Haase had got around him. There was a few old faces – for instance Haase's nephew, Paul Bennett, the drug dealer who had got out of prison with him in '96.

Bennett had a sidekick called Baz who was a bagman. He specialised in running drugs and guns. There was also an ex-boxer called Chris No-Neck, who was expert at testing consignments of drugs for purity and so on. He was also a heavy who Haase used to twat people. There was Kenny Doorteam, who ran Haase's door operation, taking care of security on nightclubs, pubs and hotels. (It was a big earner.) Thomo was a student at the university doing a degree in sociology or psychology, something like that. He was also one of Haase's heavies.

Paul was a half-caste lad who was Haase's main drug courier. He went all over the country picking up tackle for Haase and bringing it back to office for testing and distribution. Paul was Haase's main man for drugs, but he looked like a student. All of Haase's drug people were like that. They dressed like beauts. They looked like harmless students with scarves and woolly hats and suede jackets and that. The police wouldn't look twice at them. They should have – on a run they'd be carrying up to six kilos of brown each.

A lot of big villains were coming and going from the office, buying and selling tackle and that. All the time, there was new motors with new faces. Was a big operation. I started passing that on to the Customs.

Haase did a lot of debt collecting, mainly for other villains, on deals that had gone wrong. There was a hardcore of boys whose job was to fill people in, kidnap them, tie-ups, whatever. Griff was one of them. He was a karate expert. His job was to simply knock fuck out of people. He made plenty of money out of it. To me he was an ordinary feller, he was an auld feller, but because of the kung fu and karate, he had a good dig on him.

At first this was the only type of stuff John allowed me to see – the knocking fuck out of folk, the low-level stuff. One day we went to this feller's house, I think he owed Haase money. Griff broke his jaw straight-off, no back answers, with one dig. Haase's methods were often too crude for some clients. A demolition man called Joe then came to see Haase wanting a so-called debt recovered. Joe said a solicitor from Crosby had had him over for all kinds of money. Joe just asked Haase to go up there and have a quiet talk with him, get it all sorted on the QT. Gentleman's agreement and that. Not Haase. He steamed straight up there, into the solicitor's office and smashed fuck out of it. Could not believe it, la. This solicitor was well connected to the busies and the judges. He wasn't a fucking gangster, he was a civilian and a fucking brief to boot. But John didn't care. These were the new rules. ‘I'm John Haase – I'm invincible' was his attitude.

There was no money in the solicitor's office. So Haase found out where the solicitor lived and sent someone down to smash his windows in and blow his car up and all that carry on. The solicitor got on his toes in fear for his life. In the end, Haase put so much pressure on the solicitor that he called in the busies. Joe the demolition man got pulled in for it. But Haase couldn't give a fuck. His attitude was ‘If the busies interfere in my business they'll get the same treatment.'