Powder Wars (29 page)

That was worst thing – Haase thought that having a load of tackle on your desk was the most natural thing in the world. It made me sick. To me it was just like having a load of anthrax or fucking Semtex. It just spelled death.

After the black lad, Paul, had gone, Chris No-Neck arrived. That was for the official testing. Once they'd got the percentage purity, it went into sales and distribution immediately. This was a sigma six organisation. Richard Branson had fuck all on it. Haase would be on the moby shouting all kind of orders to Bennett. Then he'd get off into the night, leaving No-Neck to deal with all the gangsters who started arriving from all corners of the city, to take samples away.

That was the drill every two to three weeks. That evening, shortly after No-Neck had arrived, I said to Haase: ‘You don't need me anymore,' and I got off. As soon as I got outside I phoned my Customs handler and told him exactly what I had seen.

Haase would send Paul all over the country collecting and delivering kis of drugs. I always knew that Paul was out of town on a drugs run 'cos Haase would leave the Dock and go to a phone box on the Dock Road to call him. He would never ever make or take drugs-related calls from the office.

Haase must have trusted Paul to courier his tackle. Then I found out why. Paul had once got nicked in Africa or somewhere with a load of gear. Haase had paid a lot of dough to get him free. When he got out he looked like he'd been in a concentration camp. He owed Haase big time and I think he was working off the debt moving tackle around for his saviour.

One of the Turks Haase used to deal with kept phoning the office. His name was Kaya. I couldn't even pronounce his other name. He was the boss of the Turkish Connection who had supplied Haase with the 55 kilos he got nicked with in '93. Kaya used to phone him from the jail, but he wouldn't take the call. Then his sister kept phoning up. Haase just blanked it. Haase said that he owed their family money and that's why he was fucking them off.

But I got the impression that there was more to it. He wasn't letting me in to that side of his business. That's what he did. He kept the big things secret. Haase wasn't taking their calls 'cos he knew that the phones from the prison were monitored. He didn't want them to make a connection with Kaya and him with all the shit that was going on. He knew that after he conned the Government they'd be on red alert to catch him with that crowd again. I think he'd call them back later from a phone box when I wasn't there.

The Customs wanted to bug the offices, both at the Dock and at the old funeral parlour. At first they wanted to put an audio bug in his phone-fax machine at the Dock, but they couldn't get into the Dock. Haase told me that he had chosen the Dock specifically so that no one could get into it. I think he had Customs and police in mind especially. Haase had deliberately designed a full range of counter-surveillance measures into his HQ.

First off, the Dock was a keep within a castle. The walls were ten feet high and two feet thick. Haase had 24-hour guards on the door and on the gate into the car park. Sometimes there was a man inside. There were scouts and spotters, anyone from taxi drivers to deliverymen on the payroll, who kept the premises constantly under surveillance from moving, unmarked, unconnected positions and patrols, looking for warning signs. A moody van, a passer-by, it was likely that any surveillance unit watching Haase would be being watched themselves.

The Dock had a state-of-the-art bell on it. It was cameraed-up to death. Sometimes Haase would come back to the office at four in the morning and spend hours looking at the CCTV monitors to make sure no one was trying to get in. Then when he'd finished with the live pictures he used to go over that day's tapes to clock who'd come and gone. Scouring the screen for anything suspicious.

I couldn't believe anyone would take care of the details like that, but he was clever enough to realise that only he alone could truly look after his security. Other people got lazy. So even with their best penetration teams, Customs could get nowhere near the Dock. Then my handler asked me whether I could remove the fax machine for a few hours so that they could install the bug. I agreed. But they got cold feet.

Then they decided to have a go at the old mortuary office. They were desperate. We both knew that was the only way to get proper evidence. I met my handler and gave him the alarm number. Drew a map of the office and pointed out Haase's desk. They gave me 250 quid as expenses.

I waited for them to break in and place it. It was a tense time, totally ontop to be truthful. One wrong move and it would have blown the whole operation. Haase would have shut down dealing and I would have probably been exposed.

On the night the Customs had gone in, I got a call at three in the morning. It was a Customs feller. They had managed to break in and put the bug in, but they couldn't reset the alarm. Total downer. That would give the whole game away, brought it ontop straight away. Whoever arrived first in the morning to open up, they'd notice it.

I jumped out of bed and shot over in the car. I checked all the system, but I couldn't find the fault. Each minute we were in there, there was more chance of being tippled. The electrics must have been fucked up by the Customs team. I told them that we'd just have to take a chance on it.

I got in early the next day. By a million-to-one chance there was a load of workies outside, digging up the road and fixing the drains. There was a fucking power cut. They'd cut the wires. That got us off the hook big time. There was a big steward's inquiry as to why the alarm wasn't on and not working. So I just blamed it on the workies.

26

Gun Deal

The bug in Haase's office began to pay dividends. The benefits were twofold. Firstly, with each whirr of the tape Customs caught more damning evidence against Haase himself from his own mouth. Secondly, police were able to make discreet use of the first-hand intelligence they were picking up to stop crimes and make arrests in the immediate term.

This was a delicate and high-risk operation. Obviously, the police had to be very careful to make sure that the arrests were not being linked to Haase's premises – otherwise the underworld would have quickly realised there was a bug plus informant in there. But despite this, many arrests were made.

A car got stopped in the Mersey Tunnel with a bootful of guns. A Mr Big gun dealer on the Wirral was raided and found with incriminating evidence all over his house. There were many more. It was only a matter of time before they went in for the kill and took out Haase himself.

PAUL: The crew were making a lot of dough – millions. There was always money.

No-Neck says he wants get married in Mexico, sombreros and all that. Haase says: ‘Sound. No problem. Here's £10,000.'

‘John, I need a new car.'

Haase says: ‘Yes, you do. Here's a Peugeot 406.'

‘John, I'm going on holiday.'

Haase is like: ‘Have a nice time. Here's your spends.'

The lads constantly had their hand out – and like a feudal fucking Lancelot riding amongst his teamsters, Haase boxed them off for anything they wanted. There was so much money. In the end, No-Neck had two weddings – one in fucking Meckico and one in Liverpool. Knowmean, how fucking
Hello
is that? But it didn't matter. Running out of dough?

‘Sound, lad, just fucking rob some more. Low on tank there, kidder? Is right. Here's five kilos of beak. See you later.'

In between knocking out the tackle, there was plenty of time for general crime. There was the Asian feller, who was a big duty-free ciggie broker. He worked for a firm but Haase had him boxed off. So that when there was big artics coming in from France with loads of ciggies, the Asian feller would give Haase the nod on it. The consignments would be had off, no back answers. The Asian feller would then pretend that he had been legitimately robbed so that he wouldn't have to pay the real owners and Haase would cop for the lot. All's I had to do was open the gate when the load arrived. Haase gave me £2,000. He'd give Heath £4,000 for getting rid of the van or the truck. Laughing, he was.

Haase was making millions off've the ciggies. Literally fucking millions. That's what the Customs could never work out. Was making fucking 20 times more off've the ciggies than heroin and cocaine. No cargo was less than 50 grand's worth. The profit was one thousand per cent, week in, week out. Buy them on the continent for £3 for a 200-bifter carton. And sell them for £30 in England. With no jail or nothing. Get paid or what?

One night I gets a call: ‘I'm having trouble with coloureds.'

What he meant was that a team of heavy hitters from Toccy had declared war on his door team. Kenny had taken over the door on a famous bar called Kirklands where the footie players used to go and that. Kenny had smashed the windows, gibbed the black door team and now they'd turned up mob handed outside. Oh dear! These were well known bad lads, but Haase didn't give a fuck.

‘Go down there and tell Kenny to give them a kicking. I want to see their blood running down Hardman Street.'

I took my telescopic flip stick and told Kenny to stop talking and do them in, but he just kept on negotiating in the bar. There was a call-out and Haase sent a vanload of 15 doormen down as back-up, but Kenny was trying to avoid a war. Haase was fucking furious.

Haase was like that: ‘I couldn't give a fuck about all that doorman stuff, standing there saying, “I'm on the weights,” and all that, just fucking waste them.'

That night he had the six Toxteth gang bosses' cars firebombed outside their L8 pads. Whoosh! End of story. End of problem. It was an audacious warning to them, which surprisingly they heeded.

That was Haase's favourite trick. You'd be sitting there on the couch watching
Coronation Street
. Next minute you'd look out the window and your car would be on fire. Two other door firms weren't handing over their door quick enough. Whoosh! One of their cars goes up. Then the doorman is twatted. The second one is the same. Whoosh! Beatings. Get door. Get paid. It was always the same system.

Heath was doing it all. In the end, he got sick of it. He was sent to Scotland to pick up £22,000 in cash for a ki of brown and some other bits and bobs. He phones me up. ‘Half tempted to do one with dough,' he says.

I was like that: ‘Go 'ead, lad. Just fuck off with his dough.' But when it came down to it, Heath didn't have the bottle to fuck Haase.

Haase was buying a lot of swag off a feller called Mick the Pallet who owned a pallet yard down the road. He was a old-style hijacker, pure wagon haver-offer, but he only went for high-value loads. The wagon drivers were involved. He couldn't work out why he kept getting turned over by the busies. It was because the Customs were watching him drive his had-off lorries into Haase's yard.

One time he had off £500,000 worth of designer clobber which was in a lorry going to Wade Smiths. Wadies is a kind of department store for scallies with all the latest labels in and that. The footie players and the drug dealers go there for clobber. Posh and Becks and all that carry on. Haase bought £150,000 worth of Versace suits for £10,000. I had to move them into the back office.

Haase was like that to everyone: ‘Just pick what you want.'

All the lads were walking round in it, little skinny suits on and that. Shiny shirts with big fucking Chinese dragons on. Looked a bit mad to me, but it was a good seller. It was getting moved all round the city by a fence in his private hire cab. Anyone who came to the office left looking like Steve McManaman on a night out, knowmean?

One of my jobs was to go to Haase's flat regularly where he gave me ten or so mobile phones to get rid of. He constantly changed them. Then I'd go to a mobile phone shop on Edge Lane and buy a dozen more pay-as-you-goes. I went there that often that the shop assistants called me the man with no name 'cos no names were ever given. Every time he and the team changed their phones I had to give the numbers to Customs.

I seen him cleaning guns another two times. Then one day he bought a .38mm handgun off've one of the doormen along with 100 rounds of ammo. Was purely meticulous in his armament deals, he was. Sat there and counted out every fucking bullet on his desk, until he was convinced that he hadn't been ripped off. Then he went downstairs in the cellar of the Dock and pinged off a few rounds.

I was feeding the Customs that much fucking stuff they would have needed a small army just to keep on top of it all, know where I'm going? Didn't know the exact cases the Customs and the busies were going to pin on him, so I just kept the info flowing.

John was doing a lot of gun running to a firm in Scotland, but because of all the fucking chaos I could never get a hangle on it. But Heath kept telling me how it worked – 'cos he was right in the thick of it. Was simple. Every time the Jocks wanted shooters they sent a bagman down to Liverpool. Heath got the gear off've Haase and he drove out to meet the crazy Jocks on his motorbike.

Then in August '99 Heath told me that the next shipment was on the cards. This was the first time he'd told me about a delivery before it went off. Get paid. I gee'd the Customs up good style and told them to be ready. Then Heath went away on holiday. He must have thought it would go off when he got back, but suddenly the Jocks wanted their firearms. They must have had a blag planned or whatever.

It could've easily have been done without Heath, but by this time Haase thought so much of him that he put it off until he got back. Could not understand it, la. Only needed someone on a bike. But Haase was insistent – want Heath, la. No back answers.

When Heath got back, John was made up. Then on 7 September Haase called me and said: ‘Get down the Dock for 12.'