Powder Wars (5 page)

The Hole in the Wall gang was my perfect crime. OK, so the money from each bit of work wasn't as good as say blowing a safe or robbing a bank. Those lads might be looking at 20s,30s,50s from a nice job. But we weren't taking the same risks as these heavy-duty peelers, were we? Neither were we looking at those same figures converted into time, if we got collared, were we? And the thingimijig is, those big jobs don't come along everyday. Whereas we were robbing warehouses three times a week and we were guaranteed a payday each time, which you were most definitely not with the cracking-safes business. There is no worse blues than to have a safe off to find out there's fuck all in it. Pure sinker, la. I know because I've done it. Or even worse, la, is when you've got it in your grasp, but you can't open the cunt. Frustrating isn't in it.

No such obstacles in the warehouse game. If you see a bonded warehouse, you can bet your bottom dollar that it's going to be fucking chocca with millions of squids worth of ciggies and booze. Ripe for the having off. No messing around. We may not have been top dogs in the criminal hierarchy, which exists by the way depending on which caper you're into, but the Hole in the Wall gang was a safe investment at the end of the day. Safe as houses, it was

Pure McDonald's franchise, it were in all fairness. Stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap. All day, every day, knocking off and knocking out your standard no-frills products, Fordism and gangsterism in perfect harmony. And as far as I figured, villainy wasn't about blowing bags on a Chinese and champagne all round for your cronies, and eulogising yourself that you're a Great Train Robber and that. It was about getting paid. Even if it meant getting your mittens dirty and being overlooked in the status department.

We was robbing whisky off the docks week in week out. Each load was about 30 to 35 grand so it was averaging out at about 5 grand a hit per person. There were seven fellers involved. I wouldn't get the money straight away; it took a few weeks to filter through. But that was sound.

People like Billy Grimwood were using the whisky to set themselves up in clubs and pubs. Ten tons of spirits was a hell of a lot of stuff. Then some of the dockers started lining jobs up of their own accord, circumventing the Bennetts and the other gang masters, and ringing them into Ritchie direct. Is right. More wages for them.

This ring-in work were a bit less sophisticated. But equally as profitable. For e.g., there were regular and huge deliveries of brandy into one of the big bondeds down on the wharf. The dockers would organise it so that out of every forty pallets that come in on the ship, one would go west, and be stored in a little corner they had tucked away for such things. So much would go into the bonded, so much would go somewhere else – to us. When they had accrued 10 or 15 tonnes of this snide brandy, which would be very quick, by the way, because of the huge throughput, they would give Ritchie a ring and he would send me down with a wagon to load it up. The dockers loaded it onto the wagon themselves. Forklift trucks and all, too. Easy peasy. Allday. Get paid.

Graft like this, we just seen as our tax. So much duty to the Government, so much to the local warlords, like our good selves. Been going on for centuries in all the ports, in all the world. Just at that particular moment in history, our little crew were lucky to take over the stewardship of that most excellent maritime tradition, and the wedge was enriching our coffers, until it was time for someone else to have his turn.

At about that time the port authority introduced containerisation to flummox the likes of YT and their crews. But we were still able to get into them, these containers. It was just a bit more hassle. Dick the Stick could open all doors. You'd just have to stand next to him to see it and believe it. He was so fast and good with this little crowbar he had.

4

Expansion

To beat the menace of containerisation, the Hole in the Wall gang set their sights further afield. They simply waited for the cargoes to leave the docks before stealing them.

PAUL: After they brought in containerisation and made the docks like a fortress, we thought, ‘Why the fuck bother? Why not wait for it to leave the docks and go into the holding depots and factories and that outside the port?' Hardly fucking Meyer Lansky, I know. Just a bit of common sense, to be fair. But it paid off. The first one we did was a warehouse on the East Lancs Road. It was like a huge distribution depot where freshly imported commodities would be loaded onto wagons. There was so much going on that there were half-loaded wagons all over the place, waiting for the next shipment to come in, so that they could be filled up and fucked off to wherever they were going. It was chaos. I didn't even bother bringing one of my own wagons. I thought, ‘I'll just drive one of theirs away.'

I was pretty good at starting them without the keys, being by then a haulage contractor myself. Easy peasy. So we just walked on there in broad daylight with overalls and donkey jackets on and that, as though we were warehousemen, and went from wagon to wagon looking for the best loads to have off.

Coffee was always a banker. High-value, low-weight and the fences could liquidise into readies within hours. A pure cash converter, it was. It's the same today with the smackheads, robbing it from the Kwickie and Netto and that. Smaller scale, I know, but same principle. That and razor blades. The horrible cunts.

So we comes across this huge heavy-goods half-full of top grade Columbian coffee. The wagon next to it had thousands of tins of corned beef in it. Being logistically efficient and that, it pained us to leave with a half-load so we thought, ‘Have the Fray Bentos as well.' The market-stall folk love all that, by the way, robbed tins and that. Hand-baled that into the coffee wagon and got off. Dick the Stick did the lock on the gate and we were off. I drove it about eight miles down the East Lancs to a pub called the Oak.

We always set up the fence beforehand on jobs like this. This time it was a feller called Bobby McGorrigan who was handling it. Bobby was a sound feller. Allday, he was. Trust him with anything. He could get rid of anything and he'd pay you out cash there and then if you wanted. Not that we was short, or nothing, but he wasn't like some of these fences who were worse payers than ICI, knowmean? Ninety days and all that corporate carry on. Fuck that. Bobby was staunch. He was basically a straight-goer who had gone to jail on some small-time charge. He used to be a cab driver and he'd use his cab to ferry shoplifters around town, but in jail he'd met a little family firm called the Hughes. Post-jug he started investing their money into nightclubs and car showrooms and that. He was a money man. A washer. Made them good dough, he did. Then he went from strength to strength, rising up the criminal ladder until he ended up being a top fence. I got to know him because if the Hughes got into any trouble they'd come and see me. I was their bit of weight, if you will.

Bobby, who was a big fat bastard who we called Bob the Dog, later ripped his brother off on a big deal to enable him to buy his own garage. This same brother, Bobby's brother, was waiting at this pub to drive the wagon full of coffee and tinned ham from there. Got my five grand and got off. End of story. Remember it was the late '60s and that was a lot of dough for a young fellow.

A few days later we hit another warehouse just outside Wigan. Again it was coffee and whatever else was in there. This was a two-wagon job. A card-marker had told us that the firm left two or so wagons there in the depot overnight, so we planned just to load them up and get off. Is right, logistically and that. We were extra looking forward to these pre-Chrimbo touches because the wages were straight into our Xmas backbins, knowmean? Kiddies' presents, Chrimbo bevvies and all of that. Even yours truly was feeling the pinch. I mean, the lads need an extra bit of tank at that time of year, don't they, no matter who they are? So Ritchie, as philanthropic and family-friendly as he was, was lining up tasty work, back to back, to take care of us.

We got there about eight o'clock at night and set up an OP in a field opposite, waiting for the workers to clock off and that. It was snowing and I was freezing just lying in the snow waiting for them to leave. After we seen the last feller go, we went over the fence. We were going to put a hole in the wall to gain entry, but we found a wall made out of tin, corrugated sheets and that, so we just took them off. Bonus. Got two of the forklifts going and loaded one wagon up with coffee and the second with meatballs.

Two of us were drivers. My forklift had no brakes on, so it took longer than expected and we had to graft all night to fill these lorries up. Sweating like mules and that, even though the air was icy cold. I had the meatballs. My drop off was on the M62 motorway under a bridge. It was only half built at the time. It was officially opened by the Queen in 1971. It would have been a whole lot earlier if it wasn't for YT, but that is defo another story. McGorry's brother was there. Handed over the keys, usual script. I got in a waiting car and got off. Got indoors and straight to the land of nod, dreaming of the eight bags of sand, which I'd figured were coming to me from that little caper, easy.

The next day Ritchie met us to divvy up the dough. But he had a pure face on him, la. Says that McGorry wouldn't take the meatballs. Pure knocked them back. Apologies sent and that, but pure could not get rid for the life of him. That was the riff anyways. Fussy twat, I was thinking, those meatballs are fucking gorgeous as well. Heinz they were. Fucking lovely on toast and all, too. Was half plotting whether it was worth it to get them back and punt them round the markets myself before Chrimbo. But, in all fairness, I had a lot on my plate already.

Ritchie hands us over two grand. Bad one, la. Two bags – a pure waste of, knowmean? But the thing with Ritchie was you couldn't trust the cunt. Sometimes if we got ten grand a piece for a bit of work, he'd say he'd only be weighed in two grand each and he'd make up a little fairytale like this to cover the difference. Even to his own brother Ronnie. No one trusted Ritchie. But that was the nature of the criminally minded, la. So there was no point in getting a cob on about it. We just sent Ronnie back to the drop off point to check that Ritchie wasn't telling lies, and that he hadn't shaded them off to another fence, knowmean? Ronnie reported back stating that the meatballs were still there, sitting at the side of the M62. We could have got them back. But who cares? We just went onto the next caper. Onwards and upwards, la. That was our motto. That kind of thing happened quite a bit, but in every industry there is always wastage and spillage to be accounted for and ours was no different, knowmean?

We learned our lesson from that. From now on it was gonna be market-led targeting. The fences were screaming out for coffee. So that's what we gave them. For instance, one time we got into a distribution depot and there was a fleet of wagons partly loaded up to be taken out the next day. Some had coffee in them. Others were half-loaded with hi-fi equipment in them, which was new out at the time and very expensive. There was no argument about what to take. The coffee. End of. We took all the hi-fi equipment out using a pallet-loader and filled the wagons with coffee. That's what the fence ordered. That's what he got. I remember that I personally got between £2K and £3K for each consignment on that one and there was a fair few.

Then we found out about this new factory unit, which manufactured branded coffee, all bagged and tinned. Allday or what? I borrowed this huge, fuck-off furniture van off've a mate of mine so that we'd get maximum volume, knowmean? But was this place a no-gooder or what? Swear the place was cursed. To get into it we had to break into the warehouse next door, which was a steelmongers, which made wrought iron gates and all that. Then we put a hole in an adjoining wall which got us into the coffee place.

The first time we hit it, we were rumbled by a guard, so we had to dust double quick. In fairness, it was the size of the van, which had brought it ontop, attracted a little too much attention and we had to leave it behind. Pure fucking downer, that was, because I had to weigh the feller in who'd lent the van to us.

Few weeks later, went in again. Dick the Stick opens the main door, but there's an inner security wall inside. No probs. Put a hole in the wall. But it's like the Bank of England, la. Pure fucking castle walls, knowmean? A foot thick and all of that. So we're twatting fuck out of this wall with our tools and one of the lads smashes his hand with a hammer. Farcical or what? But it's near hanging off. The poor lad was in bulk, in all fairness. He was no mummy's boy by any stretch and soon he's in bits. You could tell the pain was bad, but we're like that: ‘Stop moaning will you. You're going to bring it ontop for all of us.' But in fairness the wound is bad. Half thought he might need an amputation. So we had to take a view and abandon ship once again and take him home.

A couple of weeks later we went back again. It was getting personal, this coffee place, now. Got in. Loaded the wagons up. Thank fuck for that. But still no joy – we couldn't drive them out because the big warehouse doors had these special locks on the inside. Huge Chubbs, they were, which even Dick the Stick was having trouble with. Had to bring the engineering gear in, the burners and that, to cut them off. We were doing all this in the dark, by the way. But after a couple of hours the locks were off and we were in business.

There were several lorry loads. Pure Italian job, it was. But even then we couldn't fit all the coffee in. One of lads noticed that there was a BMC van tucked away in this warehouse, obviously owned by this firm, with its livery on the side and that. So we put the last five tons of coffee in there and whatever else we could lash in. Then we decided that we would drive our lorries to the drop-off point and that I would come back for this last van with the five tons in it. Dick the Stick had already lined up the fence. So we were under pressure to make the meet and hand over the bulk of what we had.