The Devil (26 page)

I could see some of them starting to make moves. But I knew my Devil stare could freeze a man's blood. I watched the dissenters – the ones I could tell really wanted to machete me – and said, ‘There's no point in behaving. Yous are off the doors – end of story. You know what I mean, lad? That's it. It's the end. You've had a good run, but I'm doing it now.'

Amazingly, they swallowed it. They put their tails between their legs and just got off. The path was now free for me to take over the door. However, Stuart still wasn't happy. He didn't know I had turned over a new leaf and feared I would cause him the same problems as the Ozone lot. He panicked and asked my old friend Alfie Lewis to do the contract.

By then, Alfie had a well-established security firm that trained police officers, and he had a squeaky-clean reputation. He came to see me to sort out what was a rather delicate situation. He said, ‘Look, Stephen. He's offered me the door, and I'd like to take it.'

I simply replied, ‘Brown envelope, Alf. Brown envelope and I'll move aside. Simple.'

He said, ‘Well, how much do you want?'

‘Well, I've got rid of Ozone, and Stuart has got his club back.'

At that time, Cream was killing it, taking hundreds of thousands of pounds per week and millions more in official spin-offs. However, the real money was being made front of house, with the door team selling Ecstasy. Obviously, this was done covertly, and the owners and managers of the clubs had no knowledge of the illicit trade. Nevertheless, some of the doormen had become multimillionaires. One of my mates was making fucking 30 grand on a Saturday night. It was only after Leah Betts died in November 1995 that they clamped down on it. Nonetheless, I was going straight and wasn't interested in making 30 grand a night, so I told Alfie and Stuart to make me an offer. A few days later, they paid me 20 grand to step aside – not a bad fee for a 15-minute meeting. That's when I realised I could make a lot of money using my brain and my tongue, as opposed to a gun and a knife.

However, the pull of the ghetto was strong. No matter how much I wanted my life to be peaceful and pure, there were always demons trying to drag me back into hell. Often, it was only the petty squabbles of everyday life – family disputes, fallings out, etc. In the past, I would have dealt with them like a gangster, but the next bit of work I did – although only small – taught me a gigantic amount about how to collect a debt without resorting to criminality and how to resist the pull of the ghetto.

My nephew Daniel has got a bigger heart than King Kong, but he's also got killer eyes. In the early 1990s, a few pioneers tried to set up ‘head shops' in Britain, Amsterdam-style coffee bars where you could smoke weed and purchase all the technical apparatus you would need to grow a skunk farm. Daniel went into business with partners from Anfield called Norman and Owen, one of whom was the son of a well-known old-school face. The police quickly closed the shop down, and Norman was arrested. Even so, Daniel reckoned Norman owed him 17 grand. After a year of trying to collect his debt, Daniel came to me for help. In the past, I would have gone in straight away – all guns blazing – if only to save face for the family.

The first thing I asked Daniel was, ‘What is your settlement figure?' I knew he had probably exaggerated the actual figure he was owed. Sure enough, we arrived at four grand as a satisfactory amount. I went to see to Norman in my very scary black uniform. I allowed him to list the reasons why he thought he didn't owe the money to Daniel. All the while, I wasn't even listening. You have to be dogmatic, otherwise you find yourself being led up the garden path.

Then I said, ‘Are you finished? I've listened to what you've got to say, lad. Here's my card. This is who I am. You owe our kid ten grand.' This was simply the opening gambit. Remember, I was ready to settle for four grand.

The next time I went down, I took Daniel, and we opened talks in their kitchen. I said to Norman and Owen, ‘I don't give a fuck who you are. I don't give a fuck who you know. You're going to pay this money, and you're going to pay it before you go to jail.' Then, in the interests of fair play, I bollocked Daniel as well: ‘I've told you about messing around with these white guys. They just think you're a dumb nigger. They'll turn you over as soon as look at you. Stick with your fucking own.' It was all role play. I was saying this in front of them for effect. As a sweetener to Norman, I then said, ‘I know you're going to prison soon for the head shop. One of my relatives is in there at the moment. You can either have a good reception when you land on K wing or a bad one.' I could see him thinking, ‘He's cornering me on the outside, and he's cornering me on the inside. What the fuck am I going to do?'

The next day, I decided to switch the pressure from Norman to his partner Owen. This was a good debt-collecting tactic, just in case Norman decided to go to the police. Owen was a businessman who didn't want any aggravation. I said, ‘Make me an offer, and I'll go away.'

A little later, I received a phone call from Alfie Lewis. ‘Stephen, you're going to have some problems over this debt that you're trying to collect.' He mentioned the name of a notorious crime family who had agreed to throw in their lot with Norman and Owen if it all went down to the wire.

I told him, ‘Well, Alfie, you know me. Tell them I don't give a fuck. I don't care who they are.'

‘Well, I know that, Stephen. I'm just phoning you up to let you know who's involved. If you need anything, give us a shout.'

At that point, both sides were preparing their nuclear arsenals, polishing the warheads ready for mutually assured destruction. It was Cuban Missile Crisis time. It would soon escalate into a fully fledged gang war – if someone didn't bring the matter back to the table.

Forty-five minutes later, Owen called me up. I said, ‘Look, I'm not getting a penny out of all this. My nephew's a pain in the arse to me. Your partner's a pain in the arse to you. We need to sort this out, lad. What d'you say?'

He said, ‘I'll give you three grand.'

Remember that Daniel had said that he'd settle for four. I told Owen to make it four and we'd have a deal.

However, he replied, ‘No, I'm giving you three.'

I couldn't be seen to have been bullied, so I went away, sat Daniel down and said, ‘Look, they want to give you three grand. No guns drawn. No aggravation. My advice to you is to take the three.'

‘Man, the Stephen of old would've got 50 grand,' he argued, trying to pour scorn on my attempt to go straight. He was trying to use emotional blackmail to get me to step back over the line. I had to point certain facts out to him.

‘Look, you've been on this for 12 months and got fuck all,' I said. ‘I've been on it for a day and you've got three grand. Shut your fucking mouth and take the money.' I phoned Owen back and said, ‘That's a deal.'

I understood that the biggest worry for owen would be looking like he'd lost face by giving over the three grand. So I said to him, ‘You'll hear a lot of bullshit designed to wind you up, so I'm going to send you a text message, and I'm going to sign it with my name. When anyone says to you that the Frenchman's stood on you or made a show of you, you show them it.' I'd covered all bases. The text said:

Twenty-five minutes after sending that text to him, I got a phone call from Alfie Lewis, laughing down the phone. ‘I've seen the message you sent him, you cunt,' he said. ‘He's done nothing but fucking show it to everyone in Anfield.' Of course, I knew that he would. I knew that people would say to him, ‘The Frenchman came and you melted. You collapsed.' However, with that text he was able to defend himself and say, ‘No, I didn't. Here's the message I got off Frenchie. Me and Frenchie, we're mates. There you go.' He'd be able to big himself up with his crew and say, ‘As far as I'm concerned, that cunt French owes me a favour. What's three grand to me? It's that fucking knobhead partner of mine causing all kinds of fucking problems. Frenchie hasn't told me to give him the money. He hasn't made me give him the money. He has asked me. He's not telling me what to do. He's asking me what to do.'

In that world, being told what to do and being asked what to do is a universe apart. If you're told what to do, you're a boy. If you're asked what to do, you're a man.

Around that time, I had another revelation. Up until about 1995, you could've termed me anti-white. The truth was that I never really had much time for white people. I knew a lot of white guys and did a lot of deals with them, but, deep down, I'd always believed there was an insurmountable divide between us – never the twain shall meet. That was until I came across a young man called Christian Mark Nesbet, who changed my view of a whole race.

30

UP FROM THE ASHES

There was an old-time comedian called Michael Bentine, who was in the RAF during the war. He joked that he always knew when a pilot was going to be shot down on the next mission, as he could see the tombstones in his eyes at breakfast. Well, on the reverse side, I had the ability to spot people with lights in their eyes – winners. And Chris Nesbet was one of them. He was a guy with bright, shining beams behind his retinas.

Chris had a simple vision. He'd worked as a surveyor in a massive building corporation and had noticed that businesses were obliged to spend millions on security for their sites – on unreliable gangsters who always let them down. His dream was to set up a clean, efficient, gangster-free security company and take the world by storm.

Chris set up his first company with a man known as the Pugilist. Not the best idea. By the time I caught up with him, Chris was on his arse. He was sleeping on his mum's couch, his house was in danger of being repossessed and, worst of all, he was driving a Rover. Chris and the Pugilist didn't have the best relationship – and there was fuck all Chris could do about it.

Enter the Frenchman. I was desperate to buy into Chris's utopian dream. I had a chat with the Pugilist, and he brought me on board. My first job was to go and collect a ten-grand debt from a furniture shop. I entered the store and immediately asked the skinny proprietor to give me the keys. He said, ‘I beg your pardon?'

I replied, ‘My name's Stephen French. You owe our clients ten grand for rent. I'm seizing the goods in the shop.'

Meanwhile, Chris was bombing around with a calculator, adding up the price tags. The owner then piped up and tried to threaten me: ‘I know a few faces. I'm going to make a few calls, and you'll be dead within an hour.' To be fair, he was connected to some very bad firms, but when he went away and did his research it was clear that he was told, ‘If the Devil is in your shop, the best thing you can do is give him the keys and leave.' So he did.

The itinerary in the shop amounted to 50-grand's worth of pine: beds, wardrobes – everything you could possibly think of made of fucking pine. We decided to flog it in a half-price sale and invest the 25-grand profit in our company and vision for the future – all for a little growl at some prick. That was good business as far as I was concerned.

The beauty of the situation was that it was all legitimate business – tax paid. Again, it all came down to utilising the skills I'd learned at the Inland Revenue – reputation and psychological intimidation. My unique selling point was that I could make debtors think that the moon was going to fall out of the sky and land on their house if they didn't pay. My favourite phrase was, ‘If you double-cross me, you'll be seeing me in your fucking dreams. You'll be seeing me in your nightmares. You'll be seeing me when you're asleep.' Often, they had something to hide, so I was playing on the ‘guilty act, guilty mind' theory. Of course, I would only say this to debtors who threatened me – and Chris never knew that I said things like that.

Anyway, we had this whole heap of pine, so the first thing we did was bring our partners down to have the pick of what they wanted. My wife chose a bed and wardrobe and basically kitted our bedroom out in pine. Chris's mum and the Pugilist's bird did the same. All equal. Therefore, it came as a great shock to learn later that the Pugilist had been sneaking pine out the back door and keeping the money for himself. At first, I didn't believe Chris when he told me. I said to him that my loyalties lay with the Pugilist, as he had brought me on board in the first place. However, I also understood company politics. If the Pugilist fell on his own sword, the path would be clear for me and Chris to propel the company out of the small time and into the blue-chip world where it belonged.

The idea of catching the Pugilist in the act appealed to my Machiavellian nature. Whether you're planting bugs for the White House or stabbing your co-worker in the back over the water cooler, you have to get deep down and dirty. People don't climb the greasy pole by being kind and making grand gestures. They slide up it, propelled by backbiting and base human behaviour.

Chris said to me, ‘The Pugilist has been selling the beds incomplete without any fitments. To prove it, just go and knock on the door of someone he's sold one to and tell the person that the Pugilist forgot to give them the fitments. If they take them off you, we know he's been selling beds. We can then confront him with the evidence.'