The Devil (24 page)

He nearly crashed his car. What a hoot!

26

THE DEVIL'S COURT: THE CASE OF THE CAVALIER ATTITUDE

Followers of Islamic Sharia law will tell you that it is man-made and of lesser value than the will of the prophet Muhammad. Fair enough. Greek-based Western philosophy dictates that no man is above the law. Common sense. Followers of the dark arts will understand that in hell there is only one rule – the law of the Devil, and his word is final.

One day, I started to ponder the philosophy behind the judicial system. The only reason that I got away with being a taxman was because the underworld was beyond the reach of the long arm of the law. No one's going to tell the bizzies that they've had 20 kilos of coke robbed off them, are they? However, tax law is only one part of a whole body of legal thinking, imposed on society in order to govern the way we live. So, I got to thinking, ‘What if I extended my tax laws to regulate all kinds of underworld behaviour? Not just confine them to the profits of drug dealing. What if I invented a
whole
judicial system for villains, punishing things like antisocial behaviour, fighting and theft?' The law laid down according to Stephen Terrible French and imposed by the Devil Judge himself – just like in Skateboard's case. Justice would be done, and, more importantly, I would cop for all the fines kind of like what speed cameras do.

With this in mind, I set up a kangaroo court with wide-ranging powers and began fining villains for every transgression imaginable. Whenever I felt the need to beat someone up for letting me down, I would simply fine them instead. Of course, I charged extortionate rates, like all the best legal eagles, and soon became very rich in the process.

I'll give you an example of a typical case that came before me. All rise for the Devil Judge – his court is now in session. One night, I was having a quiet drink in a nightclub called Plummer's with John Reilly, a mate of mine – a short guy with the heart of a lion. Suddenly, a damsel in distress came over to John and asked him to help her, as she was getting beaten up by her boyfriend. Now, it's never a good idea to get involved in a domestic, especially when the victim's boyfriend is there with his three mates and has just seen the girl come over to get help from one big nigger and one little nigger. They didn't know me, and I didn't know them. Nonetheless, by the end of the evening, they
would
know me, and by the next day they'd never be able to forget me.

John went into his back pocket and got her a 20-quid note. He said, ‘The best thing that I can do for you, love, is to get you a taxi home. You can't be fucking coming over to us. Go away.' My spider senses immediately switched on when I saw the four lads taking umbrage at us having given the girl money. So, discretion being the better part of valour, I said to John, ‘We should get off, mate. These are only four run-of-the-mill lads, but I can't be arsed.'

As we were leaving via a steep embankment of stairs, one of the individuals took a running jump from behind me and landed on my shoulders, piggyback fashion. I could see the gang's rationale take the big one out first. The geezer on my back wrapped his legs around my waist and strangled my neck with his hands, furiously trying to squeeze me out.

There are two things that you can do in this situation: you can struggle and try to pull his arms off you before he renders you unconscious; or you can go with the flow and use your opponent's momentum against him. I chose the second option. The weight of him landing on me had made me stumble forward down the steps into the street. As we moved forward, I reached behind me over my own head and grabbed him by the scruff of his coat and neck. Then, in the same movement, I sharply bent double and pulled my attacker fiercely over my head as hard as I could. With this move, I was able to slam my assailant very heavily onto the concrete, WWF-style. He was unconscious immediately.

On seeing this, one of the four musketeers in the charge behind him took off up the street like Speedy Gonzales. That left two opponents, and I liked those odds. I pushed one of the remaining men into the middle of the street's oncoming traffic, leaving Johnny to deal with the last one. The fight should have been over within ten seconds. I knew what I was going to do – one karate kick to the head and the guy was going down. However, pride comes before a fall, and as soon as I raised my leg I somehow slipped over on the steel tips of my £400 moccasins and found myself sat squarely on my arse. But opponent number two didn't take advantage of this situation. Instead, he danced around me, trying to get in a position to kick me in the head. I started spinning on my back like a break-dancer, trying to keep my head away from his feet as I planned my next manoeuvre. Next, I did what my mate and five-times World Champion kick-boxer Alfie Lewis would later call a Scorpion kick. I threw my weight back onto my shoulders, stiffened my legs and flicked my feet directly out and up. My head was resting on the floor, my shoulders were at a 45-degree angle from the ground and my feet were pointing towards the sky. Bam! I'd hit him right under his jaw, lifting him off his feet and forcing him to stagger backwards.

The kick was enough to knock out an elephant, but all that it seemed to have done to him was fuzzy his mind and weaken his legs. However, it gave the Frenchman time to get back on his feet again. I looked into his eyes, and he looked into mine. He was ready to fight. I told him, ‘You know you're in trouble now, don't you?'

He replied, ‘Yeah, I think so.'

I attacked him without mercy and whacked him unconscious. I then turned around and saw Johnny struggling with the other guy over by Plummer's. The guy was kind of on top of Johnny, with his back towards me, so I gave him a roundhouse kick to his ribs. I heard the bones go pop, and the geezer fell off Johnny and started rolling on the floor, screaming. I kicked him towards his two mates. The geezer who had jumped on my back was just about coming around. They all staggered off down the road but then, for some reason, waited there.

It then came to my attention that I'd lost a gold chain and a Buddha that I wore around my neck. But I didn't have time to hang around, because I could already hear police sirens on their way, and I had a gun and £10,000 in cash on me. The first individual – the piggyback guy – was still on the floor, so I started to look around him for my gold chain. Instead, I came across a key to a Cavalier. I knew that it was a key for a Cavalier because I'd just bought my wife a brand-new SRI model. I looked around and saw a Cavalier parked near Plummer's. I realised that it was their car, which was why they were still hanging around at the end of the road.

I said, ‘Come on, John, we've got wheels. Let's get off before the bizzies get here.'

The next day, the telephone rang. It was a guy called Ginger Jones, the first cousin of Peter Lair. ‘Stephen,' he said. ‘About the Cavalier you took last night. That's my lad's car, and we've got some graft to do, so we need it back.'

Like a judge in a court, I replied authoritatively, ‘Four of them attacked me last night and spoiled my evening. I'm fining them two grand. If you want the car back, it's going to cost you that amount.'

‘Ah, you can't do that to us, lad,' he replied. ‘We're old mates. What you going on like that for?'

While I was speaking to Ginger on the telephone, Johnny Reilly was dancing around in the background like a banshee, saying, ‘Let's just fucking burn it. Burn it, Ste. Set it on fire. Fuck them. They tried to do us in. Let's set the car on fire. We don't need their money! Set the car on fire!'

However, I was thinking more like a businessman. ‘Sorry, Ginger,' I said. ‘I can't help you.' Then I put the phone down. About 15 minutes later, Peter Lair phoned me up. Apparently, Ginger had gone up the ladder and asked Lair to have a word with me. Now, as you may remember, Lair and I had history between us. Everyone was dying to see us fight so that they could see the outcome. He was about six or seven years younger than me, but I was bigger and better trained than him. Nonetheless, he was perfectly polite and reasonable on the blower. He didn't tell me that if I didn't give the car back, there was going to be trouble. He wasn't telling me what to do, he was asking me, and there's a world of difference.

However, I still didn't give a damn. ‘It's not your car,' I said. ‘If it was your car, Peter, I'd give it back to you, but it's Ginger Jones's car. He wants to make fucking money off it today, but last night his boy and his boy's mates wanted to stamp all over me. They came unstuck because they picked the wrong nigger to fuck with. So, now it's a two-grand fine, and the lad that I kicked in the face has to come down in person, cos I want to know how he survived that kick I gave him.'

Lair replied, ‘OK, Stephen, I'll tell them.' Peter would have done exactly the same thing. If we were to get it on, it would have to be for a good reason. There was grudging respect between us.

We met at a 24-hour garage that had CCTV, because everyone wanted to be on camera to be safe. The lad I'd kicked in the face was there as I'd requested – the left side of his jaw looked like he'd swallowed a cricket ball. His face was kinda hanging on his shoulder, because I had caught him with a solid double Scorpion kick, which was the equivalent of getting springboked by a donkey.

He looked at me very nervously, genially even, and said, ‘You're good with your feet you, aren't you?'

I tapped him right on his sore jaw and said, ‘How the hell did you stay awake after that?'

He took the index finger of his right hand and ran it under his nose, meaning that he'd been snorting cocaine. Charlie had kept him awake. Then I took his two grand off him. Before he got off, I gave him my verdict: ‘It's OK to have a Cavalier attitude to life, but when you go too far you have to pay the price.'

That was the moral of the tale. Case dismissed.

27

THE DEVIL RIDES OUT

I started buying huge amounts of hash direct from Morocco. Mohammed Abdul, my contact, was your typical Moroccan guy who dressed as though he wanted to be European – he wore a 1980s suit with rolled-up sleeves, a shoelace tie, a stud earring, patent leather shoes, the whole works. However, when he took me up into the hills, he looked like a different guy – he wore a long kaftan, Muslim skullcap and flat sandals, the earring was gone, and he had a small goatee. From that point on, I looked at him with a new-found respect. From the reaping of the plant to the pressing, crushing and oil making, Abdul showed me the whole process of growing hashish from start to finish.

On one of our trips to Morocco, the Rock Star and I stayed in a hut in the middle of a really poor area, being bitten by bugs the size of your fucking nuts, even though we had enough money to buy everything around us. I could see dead people slumped in the gutters. One night, I was lying in the hut unable to sleep. My spider senses started tingling like an alarm bell. I looked across at the Rock Star and saw that he was awake, too. As a precaution, we hightailed it out of there at around about 1.30 a.m., and by 2.30 a.m. were safely ensconced in the Tulip Hotel at the top of the hill. This place only accepted American dollars and locals were refused entry. We were safe and sound.

We later discovered that Abdul had planned to double-cross us and have us murdered in the mud hut that night, taking the money and hashish for himself. However, his little plan had backfired. The next day, he was found floating in the local canal.

With Abdul gone, I needed another contact, so I started dealing with a tribal man whose name will go to the grave with me. Thanks to him, we eventually got 80 kilograms back to Liverpool. But the stuff was cursed. Some fucker robbed it from our safe house. As soon as I discovered the theft, I got on the tom-toms, letting everyone know that it was my gear and whoever took it better give it fucking back or there'd be trouble.

It wasn't long before we found out the name of the thief – a guy called Cruze. Of course, he denied everything, so I took him to the 13th floor of Macmillan House and hung him out of the window by his ankles. He was dangling upside down with the blood rushing to his head, and he was screaming like a girl. He pissed and shit himself – the smell was fucking horrible. Still, I got my drugs back, and we let Cruze go free. After that, I binned the Morocco scenario. The moral of the tale is that the road from Casablanca to Marrakech is a bumpy ride and not worth the hassle or the money.

I continued with my ventures a little closer to home. I started going to London to watch the big fights. The hotel I would stay in seemed to be a prime location for a monthly drug-dealers' convention. Loads of us would stay there – firms from Scotland, Manchester and all over.

One night, we were all drinking in the hotel bar. A dealer from Amsterdam started to boast about how
huge
he really was. Foolishly – very foolishly – he let slip to one of the lads in the bar that he had £100,000 in cash stashed in his room. Now this feller was a well-known hard-hitter, so he wasn't banking on any of the London villains or the Mancs having him off. Not only did the firms fear his reputation, but they also relied on him for gear. They weren't about to shoot themselves in the foot by thieving from him.

But when I found out about it, there was only one outcome. I made my way over to the Dutchman, bought him a few drinks and got him pissed up. Then, when he turned in, I bid him goodnight and went straight into action. I collected my bally and gun from my room. I then tapped on his door and pretended to be room service. When he opened it, I put the gun to his head and backed him onto his bed. I then blindfolded and hog-tied him with tape.

Within minutes, I was back in my room with a suitcase full of £100,000 in Dutch guilders. Breakfast the next day was frantic, with the Dutchman, his henchman and his allies trying to find the culprit. I sat at his table with my muesli and commiserated: ‘Bad one, la. Who would do such a thing?'