Powder Wars (31 page)

Afterwards the busies were on the phone: ‘What the fuck is going on, Paul? I thought he was up for it.'

After that there was nothing I could do. I had to start making statements and telling tales. It was a whirlwind of magistrates' appearances, where I had to stand up and say what I was going to say in front of their briefs. I was escorted back and forth by armed police. I was the prize, no doubt about it. No cunt was taking any chances on me. Everyone knew that Haase wouldn't think twice about killing me. Especially after he definitely found out I was a grass.

They found out for sure only after I'd tried to persuade Heath to turn. Heath must have told Haase and his worst fears were confirmed. It was after one of the committals. They brought Haase into court. He was giving it moody stares. I wasn't arsed. I just kept wondering why his hair had gone so grey so quickly. It was jet black two weeks ago and now it was like a fucking silver fox, knowmean? Transfixed by it I was. Can't be down to worry. This cunt could do 20 years in jail and not give a fuck.

Then I burst out laughing. The vain bastard must have been dyeing it all along and now he's in the jug he mustn't be able to get hold of the old Grecian 2000. Haase was always meticulous about his hygiene. Always washing his fucking hands, in bleach and everything. Hygiene was unbelievable. Howard Hughes, la, he was.

The busies moved me to a new house. A team of lads went into my pad, boxed everything up and moved me out. They told me to find somewhere I wanted in any area. I chose somewhere in Wallasey. Next thing I get a phone call telling me to go up to the council. They had a place for me. Then they got me a job working for a security firm in Manchester to keep me on the move.

Was a tense time to be honest. There was a lot of stress. I started rowing with the bird I was knocking about with and we split up. My head was wrecked with it all, in all fairness. The only thing that kept me going was the gym. That and chilling out with a joint afterwards.
Pumping Iron
and all that.

One time I went round to see her, there was the usual slanging match and she called the busies. They searched me and found a little bit of weed. Could you believe it? The irony of it. Me at the centre of this massive case and being nicked for possession. I got fined £45 at the mags. Did not even try and call it in to the other lot to see if they could get me off. After all, fair's fair, isn't it?

Next thing I have to give evidence against Heath. Then his mam was on the phone saying I gave Heath up, blah blah, blah. That I'd go to hell and that. But what could I do? The busies offered me the full witness-protection programme. It even come up in court. Anywhere in the world. New ID, new house, new job, new fucking life.

But as far as I was concerned that was handing victory to Haase. That was like running away from him and everything I'd ever fucking known. I told the busies to fuck off. I told them that Paul Grimes was the name I was born with and that was the name I'd be dying with whether it was at the hands of John fucking Haase or not. I said I'm staying where I am, here in Liverpool, and facing up to these cunts. As far as I'm concerned I'm not changing my fucking life for them.

It was a lonely life. I spent a lot of time waiting inside special rooms in courts, with bored fucking busies with Hecklers next to me, reading old copies of the
Radio Times
. I'd have to wait all fucking day so that the prosecution could ask me two fucking questions. Then I'd have to go back again to answer one other fucking question . . . sitting there all day. A farce it was. Just walked in, gave me evidence and walked out. Sometimes Haase was there. They'd stare at me as I walked out. The system was fucking ridiculous.

The police were right, though they didn't know it yet. From his prison cell, Haase was already plotting to kill Grimes. Not out of revenge, but to stop him appearing in court and giving evidence. The plan was more complicated than a straightforward assassination. Haase was desperate to find out exactly how much Grimes had told his Customs handlers. At that stage Haase did not know about the bugging and the masses of intelligence the Customs had on him. What he did know was that if there was such data in existence much of it would be inadmissible against him, especially without Grimes standing up in court to back it up.

Haase's grand plan was to try and negotiate a deal with the courts. He was a past master at plea bargaining. Had he not pulled off the greatest sentencing deal of the century? Haase was totally confident he could do it again. But first he needed to find out exactly how much Grimes had given his masters.

Haase instructed one of his specialist surveillance teams to track down Grimes to his new safe house and observe his every movement. Within days his men had found it. The next step was to log his routine in a bid to determine the best time to snatch him. The plan was to bundle him into a van, kidnap him, torture him to find out what he had told them, kill him and dump him.

Paul's safe house was an anonymous flat in a council tower block in Thornridge, Morton, one of three high-rises close to the entrance of the Wallasey Tunnel. Haase's surveillance team discovered that they could see into Grimes' flat from an observation point on top of an adjacent tower block.

A former member of Haase's gang, who has been interviewed by the author, revealed how one attempted snatch raid was called off at the last minute.

One night as the team were scaling a fixed wall ladder, which gave access to the roof, they heard noises. When they reached the top and peeked over the edge of the roof wall, to their horror they found a specialist police surveillance unit already in position in the exact place they had been in just hours before.

Luckily for Haase's team, the officers were consumed by peering through their binoculars, checking on Paul Grimes sitting in his flat and scanning the estate for suspicious movements. The officers had not seen nor heard Haase's men even though they were yards away. Haase's team quickly and silently climbed down the ladder from where they had come and escaped from the estate unchallenged. They later found out that although Grimes had bravely refused the offer of close protection, the Chief Constable had ordered his officers to secretly protect their star witness without him knowing. That was the purpose of the suveillance team.

Haase realised he would have little chance of snatching Grimes. Time was running out. If he was going to do a deal with the prosecution, he would have to make soundings before the trial started. In a last-ditch attempt to find out who knew what, he turned his attention to the Customs officers who had helped gather the evidence against him.

Haase instructed his team to find out the identity of Paul's main handler. Shockingly, within days they were able to find out the name of the Customs investigator that Paul had liaised with since the days of the Warren trial, dominic Smith. Although this officer had handled Grimes at the outset of the Haase investigation, he had moved on and was now only one of a number of officers who Paul had passed information to. Nevertheless, this officer was the main port of call for Paul and his most trusted confidante. Haase gave the order for his men to track the Customs officer's every move.

Unknown to Dominic Smith, he was photographed at his home and outside his office at the Customs HQ in Manchester's Salford Quays. Using long-lens stills cameras and video equipment the team recorded him at secret meetings with Paul Grimes and at liaisons with other informants on unrelated cases. From these encounters the team learned the identity of several underworld figures who were feeding information back to Customs and Excise.

Once Haase's reconnaissance had been completed he gave the order to kidnap the Customs officer. It was unprecedented. To kidnap a serving law enforcement officer was unheard of. It was an unspeakable crime, well outside the unwritten underground code of conduct, but Haase did not give a fuck. He was a desperate man determined to do what it took to get off. Haase instructed his men to snatch Dominic Smith and torture him to find out what he knew but to avoid killing him. Some of Haase's men were uneasy but they understood to refuse would mean certain death. The operation got underway, but from the outset there were problems.

Owing to the Customs rules of officers working in pairs, the investigator was never alone. His home was protected by a sophisticated alarm and he drove everywhere, competently and at high speeds, making him difficult to ambush. Several times the trap was set – but never sprung for one hitch after another. Eventually Haase had to drop the plan. Time was running out fast. He would be forced to try and negotiate a deal with the prosecution without any aces up his sleeve. He would be playing blind.

28

The Deal

Haase instructed his solicitor, Tony Nelson, the lawyer who had brokered the deal that freed him from the first 18-year sentence, to instruct his barrister, the eminent Lord Carlile of Berriew, to start talking to the prosecution.

Seemingly, a compromise was reached without delay. The essence of the deal hinged on Haase pleading guilty to lesser charges. In return for the much desired, cost-saving guilty plea, the prosecution would bless a deal to give Haase a short sentence. The jail term would be slashed because of mitigating circumstances. In short, Nelson believed that if everybody played the game Haase might ‘cop' for no more than six years. Not exactly a walkover, but the best of a very bad situation. Haase was still convinced that if he had killed Grimes and ‘gotten to' the Customs investigator he would have been looking at instant freedom.

Nelson pushed Haase to take the deal. In a letter to Lord Carlile, dated 5 December 2000, Nelson states:

The letter goes on to reveal that ‘if one takes into account all the mitigating features that you have agreed with the prosecution towards damage limitation', then Haase would expect a sentence of between six and seven years. Furthermore, Nelson stated that this could be reduced to between four and five years if Haase pleaded guilty to the charge, saving the state the cost of a lengthy trial.

Nelson continued:

The second charge relating to the heroin deal was also the subject of intense plea bargaining. Seemingly, Lord Carlile was successful in having the indictment reduced to a money-laundering charge, reasoning that Haase would admit to putting up the money to purchase the heroin but not conspiring to actually deal in the drugs. Furthermore, the amount of money said to be laundered was reduced from £10,000 to £3,500.

In the same letter Nelson stated to Carlile:

In short Haase was being offered four to five years for the guns and approximately 18 months for the money laundering; a total of about six years. John reasoned that with time off for good behaviour that meant four years, and taking into account the time spent on remand, he'd be out in 2003.

‘Is right,' he thought. He was 51 years old at the time. It meant he would be out by the time he was 55 – just in time to start preparing for his retirement. Haase agreed to the deal and pleaded guilty before the trial kicked off. Haase was particularly satisfied with himself. He had pulled off another extraordinary legal coup.

There was one other small matter. Haase claims that a secret clause was inserted into the bargain late on in the negotiations. It stated that he would never be allowed to talk publicly about this deal or the deal he had done over the previous 18-year sentence.

From the bargain, Haase had got what he wanted. But it had not all been plain sailing. At a critical point in the negotiations Lord Carlile suddenly resigned, seemingly fed up with Haase's unrelenting and often contemptuous hard-line approach to the legal system. Haase claimed that they fell out after he instructed Carlile to summon the former Home Secretary Michael Howard as a witness. Haase claimed Carlile was horrified at the prospect and immediately resigned. But after a brief hiatus the problem was smoothed over and Lord Carlile came back on board.

With the six-year deal apparently set in stone, Haase had to sit back and await sentencing while his co-defendants were tried.

First up in January 2001 was Barry Oliver, the security guard who had allegedly been at the Dock offices on the day the guns were handed over. His co-defendants Heath Grimes and Walter Kirkwood, like John Haase, had entered guilty pleas. The court heard how Customs monitored the deal using electronic surveillance. David Steer, QC, prosecuting, said: