The Devil (21 page)

He replied, ‘Well, OK, but you've got to come by yourself.'

I got some counterfeit money and put it in a big washing bag. I then went to his garage and showed it to him, and he showed me the gear. Now, 20 kilograms is quite heavy to physically run with, so I had the car parked right outside.

The last thing the Asian guy expected was a tax job. He knew my name and where I lived, but what he didn't know was that my name was bogus and the flat was rented. Still, he had brought an Asian bodyguard, just in case. I started haggling over the price and gesticulating with my hands, as you do when you're bartering. ‘Look at that hand there – look at my left hand,' I said, pretending as though I was indicating at some part of the transaction. As his eyes followed my left hand, I whacked him with my right. It's one of my little tricks – an old one, but it still works. The Asian guy went down, and I kicked his bodyguard with such force that he flew across the room. I grabbed the gear, and before I knew it I was in the car and away.

I crept back to the flat to get some of my stuff and sent the heroin to Scotland for sale. Wholesale, it was worth £250,000. Ounced up and danced on, we would enjoy a total return of half a million. I slipped back into Liverpool to find a safe house for a few days, before I went out of town to get my dough. On my way there, I bumped into Johnny Phillips, of all people. He dropped a bombshell. Apparently, I was going to be on
Crimewatch
the following week as the poster boy for Britain's most wanted man. There would be warnings out saying how dangerous I was and how I shouldn't be approached, etc. Johnny reckoned the police would find me. ‘Things are going to hot up for you,' he said. ‘If I was you, I'd get off.'

Now, when a thing like that happens, you know it's time to leave. I'd been walking round Manchester being a happy-go-lucky Scouser, but now everyone in the country would know my face. As I had little time, I bought a direct flight from London City Airport to Rotterdam. There wasn't even enough time to get one of my blag passports, so I ended up using my own. I was panicked, to be fair. I phoned Rodriguez, who was in Scotland with the gear. ‘Sell the gear for £500,000,' I said. ‘Take £100,000 for yourself, and you can give me my end next time I slip back into the country.' I picked up five grand cash for spends from my kitty in Liverpool and headed for a new life on the Continent.

At first, everything went well. I breezed through check-in and security, had a continental breakfast at the leather-trimmed bar in departures and chatted with the exotic business travellers from Milan and Munich. Everything was how it should have been on a glamorous business trip to a new and exciting life. I got on the plane with the five grand stuffed down my drawers. The air stewardess smiled and flirted with me, then announced there would be a slight delay. No probs. I was still buzzing from the champagne livener I'd enjoyed at the bar. I settled back to read my
Daily Telegraph
and the obligatory in-flight
Newsweek.

The next minute, I felt some pressure on the back of my seat. A voice came into my ear: ‘All right, Stephen. It's DC McDougal here. We've got a van outside on the runway. You know where you're going, don't you? And it ain't Rotterdam.' Fuck. The bizzies had caught up with me. So near, yet so far.

The game wasn't over yet. I immediately looked around to assess the lie of the land. What about the escape exits? As I lined him up for an uppercut, I thought about jumping from the emergency exit. However, I've got an edict that I never assault a police officer in an official situation, especially if he was being fair. If an officer knew my ID, I never assaulted him, because ten years down the line it could come back to haunt me. So, instead, I told him I'd go quietly.

You have to be quite thick-skinned not to feel embarrassed about being escorted off a plane full of passengers. It's the stereotype of the big black criminal being shackled and led away in front of a gossiping, slightly fearful white crowd, loving the drama of it. But I had actually conditioned myself not to care – to keep the focus on my next move. You can't be worrying about what the man in the street thinks about you. You've got to be thinking about how you're going to get from A to B – and, most importantly, how you're going to avoid incarceration. However, at that time, the only conclusion I could come to was that I was fucked and facing 20 years.

When I got back to the Liverpool nick, a solicitor called Enzo Scarri came to see me. ‘I've been sent to you by one of your friends,' he said. ‘You'll be going home tonight.'

‘Bollocks,' I thought. ‘Not in a million years.'

I said, ‘If I'm going home tonight, you can have a grand out of that five grand the bizzies have taken off me.' Now, I didn't know what this guy had in mind, but I was prepared to give it a shot. Enzo refused the £1,000 but still came up with a plan.

He quickly flipped through my legal papers and started reading the statements about the pressing engagement with Mona. After I had burned Mona, we had stolen his Mercedes and driven it up to Scotland. During that journey, I'd got stopped by a police car for speeding. I had given them a false name, Peter Purlough, backed up with a matching ID. Apparently, the copper who had stopped me had said in a statement that the man driving (me) had a distinguishing mark on his forearm. He'd gotten mixed up – my distinguishing mark was actually on the back of my arm.

Enzo said to me, ‘When you go upstairs to do the ID in front of the copper, say fuck all and just show them the inside of your forearms. Don't show them the outside. When they ask to see the outside of your arms, refuse.'

Lo and behold, that minuscule technicality got me off. When
Daily Mail
readers complain about fancy lawyers working the justice system with the odds stacked in favour of the criminal – they're fucking right. And God be with them.

The police were fucking furious and rightly so. They were determined to get me back inside, so they even tried to pin the speeding offence on me. Then, at the magistrates' court, the copper who had mistakenly identified me bumped into me on the stairs. My lawyer argued that he had contaminated the case, and it was as good as binned. However, before it was dismissed, the magistrate wanted to see the mysterious distinguishing mark for herself. Instead of just letting me go, she looked me up and down. She explained that she had to examine my body for tattoos and scars – just to make sure. She came round from the bench, and I could hear her breathing heavily. I was 33 with a body like Adonis. I reckon all she wanted to do was to have a perv of me. She was an elderly white woman who most probably had fantasies about black criminals. It was quite amusing to say the least, and she probably wouldn't have complained if I had turned her around and bent her over. Of course, I didn't, but she let me off anyway.

When I got out, the first thing I did was visit Marsellus's family. He was doing 15 years, and his bird was in bits. They were skint. Furious, I dug out my trusty Morphy Richards and headed towards Mona's ken to get even with him for grassing us up.

I got hold of Mona on the phone. ‘Listen, you cunt,' I said. ‘I'm coming to iron you again. This time I'm going to do your face. You deserved to be burned the first time, and I'm gonna burn you again. You've put Marsellus in jail, and you've caused me to go on the run for a year.'

A few minutes later, he called back. ‘Stephen. Back off. We'll pay you compensation.' Music to my ears. I slammed on the brakes, did a U-ie and headed to the gym for a massage. The next day, 40 grand in cash was dropped round at Marsellus's bird's house. Not enough to see her through the sentence, but better than a boot in the face.

As I was working out, it struck me that I had had a very lucky escape. I could see the writing on the wall – one day my nine lives were gonna run out. Ever since Andrew John had been murdered, I'd been in touch with my own vulnerability. Now it was beginning to go deeper – existential. I started to question my own mortality – my own morality.

For fuck's sake, what was all this shit for?

24

THE DAY OF THE JACKAL

Like in any other business, when you have accrued wealth and power in the underworld, people start approaching you with ‘investment opportunities'. With the reputation I had, individuals would come to me with their get-rich-quick schemes, in the hope that I would throw a few quid behind them. It would often be fellows I didn't even know!

‘Stephen, a man of your stature,' they would say in their pitch. ‘A man of your money could easily pull off a deal like this. If we just do this, or we just do that, we can all make a lot of dough.'

Nine times out of ten, the schemes would be rejected, but every now and again something with serious potential would appear on the horizon. It was a bit like that telly programme
Dragons' Den,
except that the ‘candidates' coming before me and my partners weren't budding inventors – their proposals didn't involve a self-cooking-egg machine or a new type of underwear. These people were hardened fucking heroin traffickers and cut-throats of every description. Their schemes usually involved underwriting drug deals, tying someone up and torturing them or blowing up a house with a hand grenade. Venture capitalism for sure, but hard-core villainous at the same time.

One thing that definitely differentiated our dragons' den from the telly version was that if you tried to double-cross our little panel of experts, you wouldn't be getting out of the fucking den. Never mind a telling off from Duncan Bannatyne – you would be stripped naked, sexually abused with a broom handle and singed by the full force of the Devil's flames on the hairs of your balls – from a red-hot Rowenta. We were real fucking dragons – no back chat was tolerated. It was a true test of a man's entrepreneurial spirit to come before us with a business proposal.

Our crew was doing pretty well financially. We were working out of an office called Wear Promotions, which served as a front for all our illegal activities. On the panel of our little firm was the cream of the criminal elite in the UK. On my right was Whacker – international dealer extraordinaire who had recently returned after being on the run. And on my left was the Rock Star, the legendary underworld taxman, drug baron, enforcer and general all-rounder. We had a boardroom where we would hold court, entertaining a steady stream of freelancers and their hare-brained ideas. One such guy went by the name of ‘the Jackal'. He'd been on the periphery of the firm doing odd bits and pieces, and no matter how much he took the piss you couldn't help but like the guy, cos he had the gift of the gab. He could sell snow to Eskimos and sand to Arabs – he was that kind of guy.

One day, he came into the dragons' den and told us that he had a Turkish connection. That meant only one thing – heroin. ‘I can get cheap gear out in Turkey,' he said. ‘But the only problem is that I haven't got the funds to buy it, nor the means to get it back here. That's where I need your help, Stephen, with your contacts and all that carry on.'

I sat there thinking, ‘Well, we've obviously got some good contacts in Europe and South America, but we haven't got any transport from Turkey. That's not one of our areas of operation.' Just like one of the real dragons, I was ready to declare myself out and give it a pass. However, like any good businessman, you can't just make decisions unilaterally – you've got to consider the other directors.

The Rock Star was in the boardroom with me. At that moment in time, he was going through a dry spell and was a skint dragon. The Jackal's Turkish connection could just be the key to getting a bit of pocket money for him, so we decided to take a punt. We told the Jackal that we'd be prepared to dip our toe in the water. No big parcel – no 100 kilograms or anything like that – just a few bits to start off with. We told him we would put up a kitty of 20 grand as our part of the bargain. That would get us four kilograms of top-grade Turkish heroin. By the time we got it back home, it would be worth 25 grand a kilo, so you're talking a 100-grand return on the original 20-grand investment. That was a 400 per cent profit.

I reckon if drug dealers went on the real
Dragons' Den
asking for money to fund shipments of gear, the dragons would be falling over themselves to sign up. Who could blame them?

Anyway, we green-lighted the Jackal deal and started to sort out the details. Whacker and me put in ten grand each. Although the Rock Star had no money, we would let him ride free, as he was a mate. Originally, the Jackal had wanted us to fund the purchase of the heroin and organise the transport back from Turkey, but we negotiated hard with him. We agreed to put the money up for the gear, but it was his problem how he got it back to us. Take it or leave it. He wasn't going to a get a better deal anywhere else.

The Jackal came on board. He said that he had a route worked out to Turkey and back. Our end was to get him the money and a suitcase with a false bottom. It was going to be a brazen job. Basically, he was just going to crash the borders – mule himself up and go for it. If he wanted to do that on a ten-grand hit from me with a 40-grand return, well he could go right ahead. I was prepared to throw that stone, because it was a good deal for me.

This guy wasn't called the Jackal for nothing, and it wasn't because he was a dog – the underworld equivalent of a low-down rat. It was because he was as devious and had as many personalities as the character played by Edward Fox in the film
The Day of the Jackal.
He was a slippery guy – an extremely cunning fellow who could outwit anyone. Peter Foster had nothing on this guy.

So, we knew we had to keep an eye on him. We knew that at any given opportunity he would try to fuck us. He knew that we knew, but he was playing the old gambit, the one they always rely on: pretending to fear the wrath of the Devil. ‘I wouldn't try to fuck a man like you, Stephen,' the Jackal would say.