The Devil (11 page)

I said to Nazim, ‘That sounds all right. Let me get some partners to put together a parcel, and I'll be back.'

This was a good opportunity for me to bury the hatchet with Curtis and Lair. I thought that if I offered them a split of the profits of any deal I put together, we could be mates and they would let me join their firm. But as students of history will know – appeasement always leads to more war.

Enter the scene, Harry Sheen. Harry Sheen was an old-time wheeler-dealer who loved to make money any which way. Robin had told me that he was looking to invest a bit of graft, so, later that day, I met up with him and he introduced me to Harry. Remember, I was keeping my eye on Robin, because he'd been chipping me on the weed, but I had a little plan in mind. To be honest, I was gutted about Robin's betrayal, because I'd got close to him. When a mutual friend called Jimmy Fizz confirmed my suspicions, it was even worse. I knew I had to settle the score; at the end of the day, business is business and progress is progress.

We decided to put together a kitty of 100 grand – 50 from Harry, 25 from me and 25 from Robin – and do a little tester with Nazim. Immediately, Harry started to play the role of godfather, telling me how it was all going to go. Already, I was thinking, ‘When this thing lands, I'm taking it all. Robin's been fucking me.' While Robin and Harry were playing the big-time Charlies, I was thinking, ‘You think I'm a dickhead, but I'm going to show you what I'm all about.'

Ringmaster Harry decreed he would take 50 per cent, Robin would get 25 per cent and I would get 25 per cent. Even though I was the one that would be turning the merchandise into money – because I was good at selling it – he was still getting the lion's share. Listen to the deal that this fucker thought he could make me wear: it was my contacts that were bringing the gear over, I was putting up half the money, I was liquidating the parcel into gear and Harry wanted to give me 25 per cent, while all he was doing was sitting on his arse or taking his dogs for a walk. I thought, ‘Yeah, right.'

Before long, the parcel arrived, secreted in a tyre. It got delivered to Nazim as per the plan. Then we switched to the secret phase two of the op. I called Andrew John in to tax Nazim, snaffling all the gear before it was handed over to Harry.

Phase three was down to me. I went to see Harry and said, ‘Look, Nazim's been kidnapped again, and the money's gone missing. I'm not suffering a monetary loss. I want compo.'

I made Harry give me another £25,000. I can remember him sitting in my house in Garston. He knew that he was being had over, but he didn't want to make trouble with me, because he knew how it went. Later, I caught up with Robin in a flat we had and told him the same story. Of course, he didn't believe it, so I told him the truth: that I was taxing the gear and the cash, and I wanted some more money off him as a fine – again, £25,000.

As he was handing over the money, he asked me why. I said to him, ‘Look, Robin. I've been splitting thousands with you on the Class As, but you've been chipping me, mate, and this is the payback.' I also explained why I had fucked Harry: he'd tried to take the piss out of me on the deal. I said, ‘Do I look fucking stupid? My colour doesn't wash off. It's not fucking green underneath. It's black right through to the bones.' Harry just thought I was a knobhead nigger bouncer.

So, that night, I went to a meeting with my real partners – A.J., Curtis and Lair – to divvy up the loot, which was a gesture by me to win them as trustees. However, I sensed tension in the air. We had about £100,000 worth of coke and £50,000 in cash. Thirty-seven and a half grand each for a day and a half's work – not bad. Curtis was saying nothing but watching everything. Andrew was being half cocky, flexing his muscles to show off to Curtis and Lair, trying to prove that he was not just my underling. Lair was being neutral and civil but was carefully monitoring the play – to see which way it was going to go – so that he could jump on the winning side.

I had always given Andrew room to express himself. Foolishly, he'd made the mistake of misconstruing this love as fear. He suddenly made his bid for power and announced, ‘Let's keep Frenchie's share. He's always taxing everybody else, and now we're going to do it to him.'

Lair and Warren didn't say anything to this. They were leaving Andrew to carry the lot. Andrew's contempt for me was partially down to the power games that Curtis had been playing with him. Curtis feared me because I was too similar to him. He didn't want me on his firm in case I usurped him from his throne. Curtis was also envious of my ability to read a situation and steer the outcome to my benefit. I was a past master – Tiger Woods. So, Lair and Warren were seeing if Andrew could
really
put me under manners. I had the ability to turn from happy and jovial to a cold-blooded, calculated killer in a nanosecond – from smiley to vicious in the blink of an eye.

So, I looked at Andrew and said, ‘Do you really think you're man enough to keep my money? Do you really think you're man enough to take my goods? Cos if you do, feel free to do it.'

Unbeknownst to him and the others, I had taken the precaution of bringing my best friend with me – a gun, perched firmly in the small of my back. Before I'd got to the meeting, my spider senses had told me that there might be a problem.

This was also an opportunity for me to see if I was real or false. To this day, nobody has stood in front of me and called me a cunt. I had no worries about Curtis, because I knew he wasn't going to get physical. Peter Lair was an incredible street fighter, but I didn't have any fear in my heart for him, either. But I was actually
wary
of Andrew. Not scared, just wary. However, I knew that if Andrew started to get the better of me, Peter Lair would join in and kick me to death. They would actually kick me to death. Andrew had become caught up in trying to impress his new masters, cos they'd convinced him that they were going to make him a millionaire. They would think nothing of killing me. Shit like that happens every day.

I looked at A.J. again and said, ‘If you take my stuff, you'll never live to enjoy it. You're a big, strong guy, Andrew, so I won't give you a chance. I'll come out of the shadows, and you won't fucking see me. You understand? I will not give you a chance. So, give me my fucking money, give me my fucking goods and I'll be on my way. Otherwise, let's do what we are going to do.'

Up until that point, Andrew and I had been brothers. You couldn't get a fiver between us. No good could come of this. He looked at me and gave me a cold stare. Our eyes were locked. By not blinking an eye, we were saying, ‘Who's got the biggest cock here? Who's got the balls? Who's gonna be
the
number-one-all-the-way-negro here?' The true mark of a warrior is facing up to something that you're afraid of, something that evokes fear in you. If you don't face a moment like that, you're nothing but a coward and a bully. So, I was unflinching, and I could see he was realising pretty quickly that 30-odd grand wasn't worth going to war over. Suddenly, he said, ‘I'm only joking, Ste. Here's your stuff, mate.'

However, we all knew it wasn't a joke – it was just a way out. I snatched the goods from him. It was all over, but I went away with a feeling of dread in my soul. Something had gone wrong in there. He had broken the brotherly bond, and I would no longer be able to protect him. What would become of him?

11

SATANIC VERSES: RULES AND POLITICS OF TAXING

If you are a tax accountant, you might join a professional body, such as the Chartered Institute of Taxation. They have rules to keep budding taxmen in line, such as client confidentiality. However, if you're going to be a successful taxman in the drugs world, you must learn the following.

If you tax a man once, he can wear it. He may well put it down to experience, an occupational hazard, a necessary evil. However, if you tax him a second time, he
will
get angry, and it's human nature that he
will
seek revenge. This is because a frightened man is a dangerous man. If you tax him twice, he's going to think to himself, ‘Every time Frenchie is skint, he's going to take my money.' You'll force him into taking some action against you.

I had the monologue to deal with this: ‘I've taken these goods from you, but you have nothing to fear from me ever again. Even if somebody asks me to do something against you in the future, I'll have to tell them that I can't do it because we have history – that I've already done something to you, and I don't want to evoke feelings of fear or panic. So, my advice to you is to wear this tax like a shirt that doesn't fit and just get on with your life.'

The psychology behind this rule goes back centuries to Machiavelli. He said that men would often put up with great tragedies befalling them. Nevertheless, the same men would explode with unpredictable fucking ferocity if you managed to slight them in the smallest possible way and, as a result, would spend the rest of their lives seeking revenge. That is what my victims would see a second tax as – a slight against their honour, dignity and self-respect.

Dead money is simply cash that is difficult to retrieve. The best tax is when you get the goods first time – often by surprise. But if you learn of a particularly big stash and you go after it and fail, write it off. Don't bother going back for it, because you'll be going into a nest of vipers. Remember, it's only your greed that won't allow you to let go. If it's dead money, it's likely that
you
could die in the process of going back for it again.

This seems pretty self-explanatory; however, after you've taxed someone, 101 reasons to give the stolen goods back might present themselves. For instance, a gangster you know might also be mates with the victim, and he'll come lobbying to get the gear back on behalf of his pal. Or the victim or his allies might kidnap one of your gang and hold him for ransom until the goods are restored. Nevertheless, no matter what shit comes your way,
you must hold firm,
because thems your wages.

I'm not even saying for one minute that you'd do it deliberately. Sometimes it might be done by pure accident. For instance, you might not know when you tax someone that the gear is owned by a mystery third person in the background, who might turn out to be someone you know. Or you might be given some duff info about the ID of your intended victim, and when you attack the feller he turns out to be an associate. If so, you have to make amends. Crossing the line on this one can literally lead to murder, as will be later exemplified in a case study very close to home.

Following a nice touch, the difference between jail and a £15,000 holiday in St Lucia can be as minute as a molecule. Don't leave any DNA on the victim. And remember, injuries are the most compelling evidence in court.

There are two other legal factors that are related to this rule, both of which are vital to a taxman – police intelligence and police corruption, the two being interrelated. It's not what the police
know,
it's what they can
prove.
All villains are aware of this. My police intelligence file consists of at least four to five boxes of shit that police claim I've been involved in. Nonetheless, it doesn't fucking matter, because none of it can be proven. The important fact is that my actual police record is only a sheet long. So, from four or five boxes of crime, they have only ever managed to boil it down one sheet's worth of convictions. That's because I make it a top priority never to leave physical evidence behind.

Now, police intelligence can work for you or against you, and this is where the police corruption comes in. For £1,500, I could find out what sort of investigations were going on in relation to me during my taxing days, especially out of one particular police station in Liverpool. In all fairness to the Merseyside Constabulary, Norman Bettison, appointed chief constable in 1998, later cleaned up the force. He was an honest man, and if you were in tune to the nature of the beast, you could actually feel it softening when Bettison came to power. You could actually feel the beast becoming more politically correct, because law and order and fair dealing all took priority over bent officers.

So concludes the Stephen French code of conduct. However, everyone who goes to work knows that the rules regulating behaviour don't just exist in a vacuum: there's something called ‘office politics', a kind of invisible set of constantly changing rules that determine how we behave, and how the rules are interpreted and enforced, based upon our relationship with our co-workers. You'll be glad to hear that the drugs taxation industry is no different from working in an insurance office or a bank.

Don't prey on criminal organisations bigger than yours. For instance, I once knew a drug baron called Jim, who was head of a powerful crime dynasty. If Jim phoned me up and said, ‘Some nice Charlie there. I'm going to put a ki away for you,' I'd have to go down and see him, pay him for the gear and do a genuine deal. (Most of the time, the code he used was cars: ‘A lovely ride. You'd love to drive this. Come down and have a look.') If anyone else rang up and said that to me, I'd simply steal the gear and get off without paying. However, you couldn't mess with Jim. He and guys like him were so cocksure of themselves. They had so much confidence in their own reputations that they would give out kilos of cocaine or heroin on tick, knowing that they would be paid. If they weren't, they would just murder the culprit. In the jungle, you won't see a lion trying to feed on a rhino. D'you get me? As a taxman, you look for an antelope that's come into the wrong part of the jungle or one who's come to the waterhole to feed. If you want to be involved in the nefarious world of drug taxing, you've got to make sure that you can hold your own.