Powder Wars (30 page)

When I got there he just told me to stay on the gate. Another one of the lads, called Barry, was guarding the door. Heath arrived on his bike. He told me he was doing a gun drop to the Jocks. He went in Haase's office and when they both come out Haase put a small bag on top of the bike's petrol tank. That was it. Heath got off.

Barry threw his mobile phone on the floor and stamped on it. I said, ‘What the fuck are you doing that for, you silly cunt? All's you have to do is change the SIM card, not smash the fucking handset.'

But he just laughed. Fifteen minutes later Heath comes back after delivering the guns to the Scottish courier. I says to John immediately that I'm getting off, jumps in the van and fucks off. Outside the Dock I phoned Customs and give them the gen.

Paul did not know it, but at about the same time as he was on the phone to his handler, the police swooped on the car driven by the Scottish courier. In the front passenger footwell was a sports bag containing an Uzi sub-machine gun and a Smith and Wesson Magnum revolver – the most powerful handgun in the world, made famous in the
Dirty Harry
movies. The ammunition included 49 rounds of .38mm and 170 of .9mm, including 70 hollow-point bullets, which, like dum dums, are designed to expand on impact and destroy internal organs.

Following Paul's warning several weeks before, the police had been on alert to catch the gun dealers red handed. Listening extra carefully to the conversations picked up by the bug in Haase's office police were able to mount a sting operation. For many months now, a Customs surveillance team had video cameras trained on the main entrance to the office to watch the comings and goings.

Haase had been observed in contact with Heath seconds before he had left the Dock offices on his motorbike. A police surveillance team had tracked Heath's motorbike to the Atlantic Cafe in Walter Street, north Liverpool, where he drew up next to a gold Renault Laguna. A few words were exchanged.

The hired car had been driven down from Scotland by 46-year-old Walter Kirkwood, from Dumbarton, under orders from one of Scotland's leading underworld figures. Both engines were still running when the driver's electric window had buzzed down and Heath heaved the black Head sports bag from his shoulder and into the car. Nothing was said during the actual handover. Police watched as Kirkwood checked the contents before tossing the bag into the footwell and driving off.

Both vehicles headed off in separate directions: Heath's 750cc FZK Yamaha towards the Dock and the Laguna towards the M6 motorway. As Kirkwood stopped at traffic lights near the Bell Tower Hotel, Kirby, armed police surrounded the car. As evidence against Haase, it was solid gold – he was in the frame in person, the crime was contemporaneous and the continuity had been preserved throughout. The police knew that they could arrest Haase immediately and there would be enough to stick him away for a long time. But they didn't.

They had been very careful to be discreet so that Haase would not find out that the mission had been compromised until well later. Luckily, when Kirkwood did not return to Scotland his bosses battened down the hatches, maintained radio silence and did not inform Haase, presumably in case the message was intercepted and was used as further evidence to link them the two gangs. It was good organised crime practice, but it also meant that Haase carried on committing crimes unaware that the ‘busies were onto him'.

PAUL: Even I didn't know that Kirkwood had been nicked. So it was business as usual. About two weeks later I had a big argument with Haase. It was over a ridiculous thing. Basically, there was a feller who was robbing the old paving stones from the Dock next door. These flags were worth a fortune and every day he did it he gave me £1,000 for not grassing him up to the owners. I gave five tonne to Haase. But the greedy twat wanted more.

Could you believe it? The fucking tank he was on with his heroin and Uzi fucking machine guns. But that's what these fellers are like. They want a piece of even the most trivial of crimes. He told me to stop the men from having them off and I told him to do it himself. He exploded and I told him to stick his job up his arse.

By then it didn't matter to Customs too much that I had quit. The surveillance was picking up everything and I had a feeling it was all coming to an end anyway.

He wasn't wrong. One month later, on 25 October, Haase was arrested at Liverpool Lime Street train station after returning from a trip to London. In a huge and detailed Customs and police undercover surveillance operation, officers had followed Haase and a drugs mule called Kenneth Darcy as they left Liverpool from Lime Street station earlier that day. Even the men sitting in the Railtrack ticket booth who sold Haase his train ticket were undercover officers. So were the cleaners who mopped the forecourt and the guards on the train.

Haase and Darcy travelled in the first-class carriage. Under Haase's instructions, their journey was being monitored by No-Neck, whose job it was to see if Haase was being followed. After arriving in Euston, Haase made a call from a telephone kiosk to a mobile phone before both he and Darcy caught a black cab to a Turkish restaurant in Stoke Newington, north London. It was clear that Haase's Turkish Connection was still going strong.

Upon arrest Haase had more than £3,000 in cash, mostly made up of Scottish notes, while in the lining of Darcy's coat a plastic BHS bag was recovered containing a kilo of heroin – 984 grams to be precise. It was the end of Haase.

27

The Case

On 26 October 1999 more arrests were made during a police raid at Haase's Dock office at the Stanley Heritage Market. The following day he was charged with conspiring to supply heroin in relation to the kilo police had tracked from London.

A separate firearms offence stated that ‘on 7 September this year in Liverpool, he conspired with other persons to possess or sell prohibited weapons, prohibited ammunition and Section One ammunition, contrary to the Weapons Law Act 1977'.

Ken Darcy, the drugs mule Haase had travelled to London with, was charged with drugs offences. Paul's son and Haase's main lieutenant, Heath Grimes, was also charged with firearms offences, as was Barry Oliver, who had allegedly been in the Dock on the day of the gun transaction. Oliver was in a bad situation. At the time of the offences he was out of prison on Home Office licence after being convicted of manslaughter. He had set a man on fire. If found guilty, Oliver would automatically be sentenced to life.

The situation was further complicated because Haase's right-hand man Paul Bennett was wanted in connection with a £1 million cannabis importation. Over the next few months the case became a stock exchange of plea bargains and deals, as some of the parties, awed by the level of secret intelligence against them, desperately battled to get the shortest sentences possible. But Haase and Heath were in for a bigger shock. When it dawned on them that Paul Grimes was the secret informant, the grass, they could not believe it. A lifelong friend to one and father to the other.

Haase first realised that Paul had betrayed him when police unearthed a secret cache of guns hidden underneath a floorboard in an old warehouse next to his office. The warehouse was so vast that Haase was convinced that only a tip-off could have led police to the specific hiding place. The only other person who knew the secret location was Paul Grimes. He had been there when Haase had buried them. Paul had kept look-out and blocked the doorway into the huge room as Haase had pulled up a floorboard and stashed the weapons in the cavity underneath.

As the interviewing police officers asked Haase whether the guns were his, his heart sank. ‘How the fuck did they find them,' he asked himself. There was only one explanation. He'd been turned over. In a weak and unconvincing rebuttal, Haase limply tried to say that the guns were not his but actually owned by Paul Grimes. Deep down though he knew he was in deep trouble.

On the drugs-related charge Haase felt more confident. The great irony of the bust was that the kilo of heroin found on drugs mule Kenneth Darcy was not technically Haase's. Chris No-Neck had set up the deal. No-Neck had been badgering Haase to get him a kilo of brown in the run-up to the trip. Haase had first visited the Turks in London on Saturday 23 October, two days before he was busted, to talk business and pick up one kilo. But he agreed to get a second kilo of heroin for No-Neck as a favour on the following Monday. The Turks had been informed that on the Monday a courier would arrive at their cafe to pick up the parcel.

The following day, Sunday, Haase had told No-Neck that the heroin would be ready for him. Haase explained that although he would be travelling to London again on the train on Monday, he wanted Darcy to go by coach so that there was no connection between them. However, on the Monday Darcy missed the National Express coach after No-Neck gave him the wrong times.

Haase was observed bollocking No-Neck from the end of his mobile phone as he stood on the concourse of Lime Street station.

‘Chris, you piece of shit. You have fucked these very simple arrangements up.'

In the end Haase agreed to allow Darcy to travel on the train with him and even paid for his first-class ticket. It was the worst decision of his life. On the return journey later that day, they were both arrested, Darcy with the gear on him.

Haase never contemplated grassing up No-Neck, but he decided early on that his case strategy would be never to plead guilty to possessing the heroin. After all, the drugs were not found on him. He would try to cut a deal on a lesser charge.

As a bad post-script to the already ruinous situation Haase found himself in, the Turkish cafe that had supplied the heroin was raided one year later. Some of the Turks sectretly blamed Haase for leading the police to them.

Meanwhile, Heath was facing the first big rap of his life. For a while, Paul kept visiting him in prison and pumping him for information. Heath had not yet tumbled that Paul was the grass. It was a ruthless ploy, especially towards his own son, but Paul was so determined that drug-dealing Haase would be destroyed he no longer cared whether Heath went down with him or not.

Paul rationalised it in his head; even though it was his own son he had still chosen to get mixed up with Haase and drug-dealing. In his book, that was unforgivable and he deserved to be taught a lesson. It was tough love. Paul agonised over his treatment of Heath. It felt like he had lost one son but was about to lose another – by his own making. By his own double-dealing hand.

Matters were made worse when Christine, Paul's ex-wife and Heath's mother, accused Paul of the basest and most unnatural treachery. ‘How can you send your own son to prison,' she wailed. ‘You fucking bastard cunt. God will never forgive you for this.'

Paul felt like he was living in a Shakespeare play. He wrestled with both his conscience and his paternal instinct. He remembered how he had held Heath in his arms as a baby. How he had bathed him, changed his nappies and shushed him to sleep. How he had provided for and protected the helpless, crying child until he was old enough to stand on his own two feet. Now he was going to unravel that beautiful, life-giving process and destroy his creation like an abortion. Could he do it? Could he stick the knife in and turn it? Could he look Heath in the eyes as coldly as he had looked into Haase's and betray him?

Paul then made a last desperate bid to save his son. He would throw Heath a lifeline. If Heath took it, it would be his decision. Paul approached his Customs handlers and asked if they would show leniency to Heath if he turned Queen's Evidence. After much toing and froing, they came back and said that they might be interested in doing a deal, but that they also felt it wasn't worth talking about – in their eyes Heath was staunch. He would never turn grass. He looked up to Haase too much. He saw Haase as a father figure. He would never do it. Paul was pained by the father analogy, but he persuaded Customs to let him have a go.

PAUL: Everyone started getting nicked. Haase, Heath, the lot. The busies even turned my flat over to make it look as though I was a legit suspect. For a short while no one knew I was the grass.

When it come down to it I couldn't throw Heath to the lions just like that. Had to move fast. I wanted Heath to get bail so I could have a talk to him, but the busies were like that: ‘Are you fucking joking?'

Then I said to them: ‘Look I can tell you where there are more guns hidden.'

They were non-committal but I went for it anyway. I knew that they were ripping the Dock apart, but there was no chance they'd ever find anything. Special fucking SWAT teams or not. It was the largest building of its type in Europe. They'd been at it nearly eight days and found fuck all.

So I took the police to the spot. They found the gear. There was a Colt handgun and a magazine, a Brevett pistol with a mag, a sawn-off Parker-Hale 12 bore Shotgun, 200 rounds of ammo and 25 shotgun cartridges. There weren't as many shooters as I'd seen him put in there. Was like a fucking IRA cache at one stage, but he must have been selling bits over the months, getting rid and that.

The busies were made up, but they still kept Heath in the nick. I was going back and forth seeing Heath, pleading with him to save himself by fucking Haase. I give him the phone number of this busie to ring if he decided to change his mind. But I could tell he was a bit ashamed of me, his auld feller being a midnight mass and all. He kept going on about his security.

‘Dad, I've got to think about me bird and me house and that. If I talk, they are gone. Blown up. You know that.' Heath was terrified of Haase.

I said: ‘Look, the busies will put you on a programme, take you to fucking Australia or somewhere with a new fucking identity. They'll take your bird. Fuck Haase. He won't be able to find you.'

After that he phoned the special busie who hangles witness protection people. They took Heath out of the nick and drove him to a secret meeting at a hotel in Chester. The busies offered him the deal, but when it came down to signing the form his bottle went. He looked at the busie. ‘I can't do it . . . comebacks,' he whispered.