Powder Wars (4 page)

The wages weren't great. But they weren't a insult, either. £20-a-night to start with going up to a £50, if I kept the gangsters out. This was 1967 and a feller in Fords at Halewood would have to drill a lot of fucking bolts onto a lot of fucking Anglias to earn his £20 every week.

There was also fiddles to be milked on a job like this. For e.g. there was what I could make on the door myself. Used to charge normal punters £1 and £2 for the sea dogs. I had the sense to charge big groups of people coming in, say, £20 – £10 would go to me, £10 to the management. Small time, I know. But it all adds up. And I got a little taxi firm going. No licences or none of that. Just a little illegal one ferrying carloads of sailors and brass back to their ships at a fiver and tenner a throw. I'd just been banned from driving for two years for robbing a car – but it made no odds. Sometimes, if there was no one else to drive the jalopies, I would run them myself. All the ships had bars on them. So I'd just sit off in the bar all night, waiting to take them back or whatever. Drinking free booze while the sailors got up to no good with Liverpool's finest.

One night one of the seamen passed round a joint. That was the first time I'd come across drugs. It was just pot. A lot of the lads weren't into it 'cos of the hippies and that. I thought it was sound, all the same.

But the real benefits to running a door were more strategic. It got me straight into a classier kind of robbing, a tastier bracket of work altogether, if you will. Being on the door meant that there was a lot of better work being put my way. Bigger jobs, more money. It's as simple as that.

3

The Hole In The Wall Gang

In the late '60s Paul was invited to join his uncles' infamous Hole in the Wall gang. The six-strong mob, run by brothers Ritchie and Ronnie Mellor, were daring commercial burglars who robbed warehouses containing valuable commodities. They were dubbed the Hole in the Wall gang by police because of their trademark method of entry – to literally smash their way through the reinforced walls of bonded warehouses using drills and oxy-acetylene burners.

Although their method was relatively unsophisticated, each member of the team was a specialist and the planning was thorough. It paid off. The gang's hit rate was mind-boggling. At their height, the Hole in the Wall gang were breaking into three warehouses a week all over the North West. The newly built motorways were opening up virgin territory further afield all the time. Each bit of ‘work' netted Paul on average between £5,000 and £10,000 – staggering earnings for a young buck.

The booty was varied – whisky, brandy, cigarettes, cloth, industrial machinery, coffee, tea, meat, hi-fi equipment, tyres, canned food. The swag list read like a freighter's inventory, which it most often was. There was no rhyme or reason to what was stolen. As long as the Mellors could line up a fence to sell the load quickly, within hours of the raid, it was fair game. If not, if the fences could not cough up the readies instantly, often before the break of dawn deadline, the lorry loads of swag were simply dumped at the side of the road. They were written off by the gang and left to rot or be discovered and it was onto the next one.

The gang's motto was ‘slash and burn'. Plenty more fish in the sea. The North West of England was the warehouse of the world, stuffed to the brim with new and exciting goods during this post-war manufacturing boom. There was no point haggling over a wagon full of freshly stolen goods – the trail of evidence was too hot. Get Rid Quick was the order of the day.

Sometimes the jobs were to order. Other times they were inside jobs. The Mellors had a small army of ‘card-markers' on the firm. These were tipsters and spies, all over the docks and the city's industrial estates, who would secretly pass on information about the comings and goings of merchandise in return for a piece of the action. Crucially, the card-markers would appraise the gang of security and the chances of being caught before the jobs went ahead.

The risks were invariably and generally low, mainly due to the non-existence of modern CCTV and the low standards of alarm systems. Some warehouse employees were paid to ‘roll over' – cooperate with the gang while the goods they were supposed to be guarding were stolen from under their noses, often in broad daylight.

The gang's early success was briefly marred by the incarceration of their boss of bosses, Billy Grimwood, in December 1970. Grimwood was jailed for seven years for shooting his business partner David Chand in London and threatening to open fire on the police officers who gave chase.

Grimwood and Chand co-owned a drinking club in Liverpool but had gone down to London to discuss some business with the Kray twins. After the meet, they played snooker in one of the twins' billiards halls in Great Windmill Street. Grimwood wanted to celebrate the success of the meeting by high-rolling it in the capital's casinos. Chand, on the other hand, urged him to show restraint with their money. Grimwood shot him in the leg and dumped him in a nearby hospital. The police gave chase, but Grimwood threatened them with his loaded revolver, warning one of the startled officers: ‘Touch me, and there's one up the spout for you.' It was a serious case and the sentence reflected it.

PAUL: I was doing all right for myself in the late '60s. I don't mindadmitting that. I had loads of ventures on the go – all bringing in a tidy amount of dough, but I was obsessed by making money. I was hungry for it. More than hungry. I was fucking desperate, in all honesty. It burned me.

That cunt Scarface had nothing on me. There was no way I was going to let it come to me. I grafted like a cunt from the minute I woke up to the minute my head touched the pillow. Prolific work rate, I had. I didn't care what it was, legit or skewwiff. If it made a raise, I was on it, all over it like a fucking deranged animal. I was into all kind. The door on the Oslo. Had a little illegal cab firm on the go.

I'd buy nice cars for cash, like a brand new Chrysler or what have you. Do a bit of posing in it for a few days. I had a new 1600 Capri when they first came out. Then I'd see the fucking thing parked up and think, ‘What the fuck did I buy that for, making me no money.' Then I'd batter it to death on cabs.

Greedy twat, I was. Do anything to make a raise. I even sold fruit off've a handcart. So one minute I'd be getting paid decent bags for a nice bit of work I'd carried off, know where I'm going? The next I'd be getting pennies for a pound of apples off an old biddy, helping them across the road and that. But that's the way we seen ourselves, to be honest. As working-class fellows who were going out and taking a bit of extra for the good things in life. Bit Robin Hood, I know. Half a bit Kray-style propaganda, knowmean? But it was fucking true, la.

We all had our little going concerns on the sly. Billy Grimwood was into the clubs and the pubs. Me dad had a little steeplejack business – when he wasn't fucking harpooning whales off've the coast of Newfoundland, that is. Ritchie and Ronnie were into a bit of tarmacing and demolition. It made them a few shillings in between devilment, to be fair. Nothing too over-the-top, but it kept the busies and probation officers right off've their cases. Anyone making enquiries as to the source of their half-all-right incomes would have to take a view on it. They'd have to say: ‘There goes a so-many-grand-a-year man who runs a moderately successful small business. He employs half-a-dozen fellows in his construction enterprise and is, on the face of it, a legitimate business.'

Little did they fucking know, by the way. But none of us really brought it ontop for ourselves on the flash Harry front. We were sound like that. Low-key, we were. Super low-key, knowmean?

I'd got into robbing wagons. Just on my tod or with a couple of people who frequented the Oslo. Meat wagons, furniture vans, that sort of caper. The odd bit of hijacking. But mostly they were parked up and we'd just have them off. Sell the vehicle. Sell the contents. Get paid.

It weren't major wages. But it was allday, know where I'm going? That got me interested in the haulage industry. So I then decides to invest into a legitimate haulage business. It was only a small going concern but it was the thing to be into, in those days, with all the new motorways and what have you. I was doing all right with straight-goer contracts. I built it up steadily. Bought a BMC flat-back ten tonner. Few other bits and bobs. But it wasn't long before I was getting into some jarg stuff as well. From time to time my uncle Ritchie asked me if I could lend him a lorry: ‘Of course. Goes without saying.' Did not ask any questions. He'd bring it back the next day and say ‘Put that in your backbin' and give me a good few grand for my trouble. Nothing trifling, by the way: twos, threes, maybe fours. A fair old drink for a night's graft. Specially when I wasn't even there.

He'd say: ‘Don't worry about it. We had a good touch on the docks.' Meaning they'd had a load of Scotch or brandy off or what have you. Sometimes the lorry wouldn't come back for two weeks. But I wasn't arsed because it just meant more wages for me. After three or four of them, I told Ritchie that I wanted to drive on the next mission. Not for kicks, but because I purely knew that they'd have to pay me more if I actually went on the job, know where I'm going? As I says, I was a greedy twat, me.

So one day my uncle Ritchie phones me up and tells me to pop down for a meeting. When I got there, there was himself and another feller, whose grid I recognised as that of a bit of a player around town and that. Bit of a face, if you will. The lad was one of the Bennett family, a North End team with a pretty staunch reputation for the old ultra-violence. Fucking nuts some of them were, those Bennetts. Proper psychos. Did not terrify myself, by the way. But they were far from beauts, all the same. So, 'cos he's there I knows this is gonna be a half-tasty bit of work, whatever the caper might be.

My uncle tells me that the Bennetts have the docks boxed off to death – which I know – and that they'd been dropsying the keys to various warehouses to his little squadron for years – which I didn't. And that at that moment in time his good self was now in possession of a set of keys to a bonded warehouse full to the pure brim of top-end Scotch. All's I have to do is drive down there with my wagon and load up with ten tons of it. Is right. Let's go. End of. What I've been waiting for, in all fairness. And that's exactly what I did. Drove my ten tonner into this bonded warehouse on the docks. Passed the busies manning the gates. Passed the security guards. Passed the dockers. All boxed off, by the way. And straight inside. Loaded up, sheeted up and got off. It was that easy. Obscene, in fairness.

Afterwards, I dropped about forty pallets of it at a lock up in Kirby and got weighed in seven grand for my very few troubles. Get paid or what? Is that not a perfect crime? It was my first really big score. Fucking fortune in those days, by the way, and I was made up. Totally buzzing. Thought I was James Cagney, know where I'm going? And it pure whetted my good self's appetite for some more.

I'd been looking for some steady work for a while. A trade, if you will. Something to get totally into. A lot of villains were getting into the safe-blowing and that. Safes was all the rage at the time. The hoola-hoops of the underworld, if you will. Crime is like that, to be fair. There are trends and fads which come and go. Like one person tries something and everyone else has to get on the bandwagon and get into it. Villains, like everyone else, are attracted to bandwagons.

For instance, you'll get a team who are into counterfeiting or cat burgling or whatever, and they'll learn that another particular firm are doing very well out of safe-blowing. So they'll jump on that bandwagon. They'll be right on it as though they're fucking Alias Smith and Jones or whatever. So the next time the good firm goes through the roof of a picture house to blow the safe on a Sunday night, there's a queue of fucking chancers lined up in front of them. Scaffolders or what have you, playing at it.

I've met a lot of phoneys like that. Loads of them. Dreamers who think they're international jewel thieves because they've got a black polo neck and a balaclava or whatever. As I've always said, that's why the prisons are overloaded, with cunts like these bringing it ontop for all and sundry. But that's the way it goes, isn't it? Free enterprise and all of that.

But the point is, economically it's fallacy of composition. There's not enough to go around. But I'm not going to go on about it. Fuck that, fuck the safes, I thought. I was a merchant of calculated risks, an informed speculator, an adventure capitalist, if you will, and as far as I figured, safes was a purely saturated and mature market. But what about the other options?

There was armed, of course. A lot of folk were getting into the old blagging at that time. Banks. PO'eys [Post Offices]. Wages vans, etc. It was fair to say that the late '60s/early '70s were the golden years for armed robbery. Is a fact, by the way. But it wasn't a caper that yours truly was fond of. Never liked pointing guns in the faces of civilians, to be fair. And I'm not being all Kray twins about it, saying that we was a better class of villains and all of that baloney. We was scoundrels, no two ways, but terrifying office birds and that always left me a bit thingy.

Of course, there were some hardcore firms who did things right, minimum collateral damage and all of that. But on the other hand there were also a lot of spray way merchants [indiscriminate gun users] who were getting involved as well. Pure hotheads, know where I'm going? Did not think nothing of popping the driver of a security van or whatever, who was only doing his job, by the way, or firing one off in a bank, at the drop of a bally.

I mean, I'm all for perforating the ornate plaster for effect, to focus folk's minds and that. No worse than bomby night that, in my mind. But some of these FNGs were pure Mai Lai merchants, know where I'm going? Birds, kiddies, the lot. Kill 'em all, let God sort them out. Did not give a fuck who or what they shot at. Did not like that side of it one bit. So on the numerous occasions I was invited to go in on a blag I politely turned them down. And some of them firms looking to recruit my good self were pure hard hitters, by the way. Did not take a knock back too kindly, they didn't.