Powder Wars, page 23
I waited for them to break in and place it. It was a tense time, totally ontop to be truthful. One wrong move and it would have blown the whole operation. Haase would have shut down dealing and I would have probably been exposed.
On the night the Customs had gone in, I got a call at three in the morning. It was a Customs feller. They had managed to break in and put the bug in, but they couldn’t reset the alarm. Total downer. That would give the whole game away, brought it ontop straight away. Whoever arrived first in the morning to open up, they’d notice it.
I jumped out of bed and shot over in the car. I checked all the system, but I couldn’t find the fault. Each minute we were in there, there was more chance of being tippled. The electrics must have been fucked up by the Customs team. I told them that we’d just have to take a chance on it.
I got in early the next day. By a million-to-one chance there was a load of workies outside, digging up the road and fixing the drains. There was a fucking power cut. They’d cut the wires. That got us off the hook big time. There was a big steward’s inquiry as to why the alarm wasn’t on and not working. So I just blamed it on the workies.
26
* * *
Gun Deal
The bug in Haase’s office began to pay dividends. The benefits were twofold. Firstly, with each whirr of the tape Customs caught more damning evidence against Haase himself from his own mouth. Secondly, police were able to make discreet use of the first-hand intelligence they were picking up to stop crimes and make arrests in the immediate term.
This was a delicate and high-risk operation. Obviously, the police had to be very careful to make sure that the arrests were not being linked to Haase’s premises – otherwise the underworld would have quickly realised there was a bug plus informant in there. But despite this, many arrests were made.
A car got stopped in the Mersey Tunnel with a bootful of guns. A Mr Big gun dealer on the Wirral was raided and found with incriminating evidence all over his house. There were many more. It was only a matter of time before they went in for the kill and took out Haase himself.
* * *
PAUL: The crew were making a lot of dough – millions. There was always money.
No-Neck says he wants get married in Mexico, sombreros and all that. Haase says: ‘Sound. No problem. Here’s £10,000.’
‘John, I need a new car.’
Haase says: ‘Yes, you do. Here’s a Peugeot 406.’
‘John, I’m going on holiday.’
Haase is like: ‘Have a nice time. Here’s your spends.’
The lads constantly had their hand out – and like a feudal fucking Lancelot riding amongst his teamsters, Haase boxed them off for anything they wanted. There was so much money. In the end, No-Neck had two weddings – one in fucking Meckico and one in Liverpool. Knowmean, how fucking Hello is that? But it didn’t matter. Running out of dough?
‘Sound, lad, just fucking rob some more. Low on tank there, kidder? Is right. Here’s five kilos of beak. See you later.’
In between knocking out the tackle, there was plenty of time for general crime. There was the Asian feller, who was a big duty-free ciggie broker. He worked for a firm but Haase had him boxed off. So that when there was big artics coming in from France with loads of ciggies, the Asian feller would give Haase the nod on it. The consignments would be had off, no back answers. The Asian feller would then pretend that he had been legitimately robbed so that he wouldn’t have to pay the real owners and Haase would cop for the lot. All’s I had to do was open the gate when the load arrived. Haase gave me £2,000. He’d give Heath £4,000 for getting rid of the van or the truck. Laughing, he was.
Haase was making millions off’ve the ciggies. Literally fucking millions. That’s what the Customs could never work out. Was making fucking 20 times more off’ve the ciggies than heroin and cocaine. No cargo was less than 50 grand’s worth. The profit was one thousand per cent, week in, week out. Buy them on the continent for £3 for a 200-bifter carton. And sell them for £30 in England. With no jail or nothing. Get paid or what?
One night I gets a call: ‘I’m having trouble with coloureds.’
What he meant was that a team of heavy hitters from Toccy had declared war on his door team. Kenny had taken over the door on a famous bar called Kirklands where the footie players used to go and that. Kenny had smashed the windows, gibbed the black door team and now they’d turned up mob handed outside. Oh dear! These were well known bad lads, but Haase didn’t give a fuck.
‘Go down there and tell Kenny to give them a kicking. I want to see their blood running down Hardman Street.’
I took my telescopic flip stick and told Kenny to stop talking and do them in, but he just kept on negotiating in the bar. There was a call-out and Haase sent a vanload of 15 doormen down as back-up, but Kenny was trying to avoid a war. Haase was fucking furious.
Haase was like that: ‘I couldn’t give a fuck about all that doorman stuff, standing there saying, “I’m on the weights,” and all that, just fucking waste them.’
That night he had the six Toxteth gang bosses’ cars firebombed outside their L8 pads. Whoosh! End of story. End of problem. It was an audacious warning to them, which surprisingly they heeded.
That was Haase’s favourite trick. You’d be sitting there on the couch watching Coronation Street. Next minute you’d look out the window and your car would be on fire. Two other door firms weren’t handing over their door quick enough. Whoosh! One of their cars goes up. Then the doorman is twatted. The second one is the same. Whoosh! Beatings. Get door. Get paid. It was always the same system.
Heath was doing it all. In the end, he got sick of it. He was sent to Scotland to pick up £22,000 in cash for a ki of brown and some other bits and bobs. He phones me up. ‘Half tempted to do one with dough,’ he says.
I was like that: ‘Go ’ead, lad. Just fuck off with his dough.’ But when it came down to it, Heath didn’t have the bottle to fuck Haase.
Haase was buying a lot of swag off a feller called Mick the Pallet who owned a pallet yard down the road. He was a old-style hijacker, pure wagon haver-offer, but he only went for high-value loads. The wagon drivers were involved. He couldn’t work out why he kept getting turned over by the busies. It was because the Customs were watching him drive his had-off lorries into Haase’s yard.
One time he had off £500,000 worth of designer clobber which was in a lorry going to Wade Smiths. Wadies is a kind of department store for scallies with all the latest labels in and that. The footie players and the drug dealers go there for clobber. Posh and Becks and all that carry on. Haase bought £150,000 worth of Versace suits for £10,000. I had to move them into the back office.
Haase was like that to everyone: ‘Just pick what you want.’
All the lads were walking round in it, little skinny suits on and that. Shiny shirts with big fucking Chinese dragons on. Looked a bit mad to me, but it was a good seller. It was getting moved all round the city by a fence in his private hire cab. Anyone who came to the office left looking like Steve McManaman on a night out, knowmean?
One of my jobs was to go to Haase’s flat regularly where he gave me ten or so mobile phones to get rid of. He constantly changed them. Then I’d go to a mobile phone shop on Edge Lane and buy a dozen more pay-as-you-goes. I went there that often that the shop assistants called me the man with no name ’cos no names were ever given. Every time he and the team changed their phones I had to give the numbers to Customs.
I seen him cleaning guns another two times. Then one day he bought a .38mm handgun off’ve one of the doormen along with 100 rounds of ammo. Was purely meticulous in his armament deals, he was. Sat there and counted out every fucking bullet on his desk, until he was convinced that he hadn’t been ripped off. Then he went downstairs in the cellar of the Dock and pinged off a few rounds.
I was feeding the Customs that much fucking stuff they would have needed a small army just to keep on top of it all, know where I’m going? Didn’t know the exact cases the Customs and the busies were going to pin on him, so I just kept the info flowing.
John was doing a lot of gun running to a firm in Scotland, but because of all the fucking chaos I could never get a hangle on it. But Heath kept telling me how it worked – ’cos he was right in the thick of it. Was simple. Every time the Jocks wanted shooters they sent a bagman down to Liverpool. Heath got the gear off’ve Haase and he drove out to meet the crazy Jocks on his motorbike.
Then in August ’99 Heath told me that the next shipment was on the cards. This was the first time he’d told me about a delivery before it went off. Get paid. I gee’d the Customs up good style and told them to be ready. Then Heath went away on holiday. He must have thought it would go off when he got back, but suddenly the Jocks wanted their firearms. They must have had a blag planned or whatever.
It could’ve easily have been done without Heath, but by this time Haase thought so much of him that he put it off until he got back. Could not understand it, la. Only needed someone on a bike. But Haase was insistent – want Heath, la. No back answers.
When Heath got back, John was made up. Then on 7 September Haase called me and said: ‘Get down the Dock for 12.’
When I got there he just told me to stay on the gate. Another one of the lads, called Barry, was guarding the door. Heath arrived on his bike. He told me he was doing a gun drop to the Jocks. He went in Haase’s office and when they both come out Haase put a small bag on top of the bike’s petrol tank. That was it. Heath got off.
Barry threw his mobile phone on the floor and stamped on it. I said, ‘What the fuck are you doing that for, you silly cunt? All’s you have to do is change the SIM card, not smash the fucking handset.’
But he just laughed. Fifteen minutes later Heath comes back after delivering the guns to the Scottish courier. I says to John immediately that I’m getting off, jumps in the van and fucks off. Outside the Dock I phoned Customs and give them the gen.
* * *
Paul did not know it, but at about the same time as he was on the phone to his handler, the police swooped on the car driven by the Scottish courier. In the front passenger footwell was a sports bag containing an Uzi sub-machine gun and a Smith and Wesson Magnum revolver – the most powerful handgun in the world, made famous in the Dirty Harry movies. The ammunition included 49 rounds of .38mm and 170 of .9mm, including 70 hollow-point bullets, which, like dum dums, are designed to expand on impact and destroy internal organs.
Following Paul’s warning several weeks before, the police had been on alert to catch the gun dealers red handed. Listening extra carefully to the conversations picked up by the bug in Haase’s office police were able to mount a sting operation. For many months now, a Customs surveillance team had video cameras trained on the main entrance to the office to watch the comings and goings.
Haase had been observed in contact with Heath seconds before he had left the Dock offices on his motorbike. A police surveillance team had tracked Heath’s motorbike to the Atlantic Cafe in Walter Street, north Liverpool, where he drew up next to a gold Renault Laguna. A few words were exchanged.
The hired car had been driven down from Scotland by 46-year-old Walter Kirkwood, from Dumbarton, under orders from one of Scotland’s leading underworld figures. Both engines were still running when the driver’s electric window had buzzed down and Heath heaved the black Head sports bag from his shoulder and into the car. Nothing was said during the actual handover. Police watched as Kirkwood checked the contents before tossing the bag into the footwell and driving off.
Both vehicles headed off in separate directions: Heath’s 750cc FZK Yamaha towards the Dock and the Laguna towards the M6 motorway. As Kirkwood stopped at traffic lights near the Bell Tower Hotel, Kirby, armed police surrounded the car. As evidence against Haase, it was solid gold – he was in the frame in person, the crime was contemporaneous and the continuity had been preserved throughout. The police knew that they could arrest Haase immediately and there would be enough to stick him away for a long time. But they didn’t.
They had been very careful to be discreet so that Haase would not find out that the mission had been compromised until well later. Luckily, when Kirkwood did not return to Scotland his bosses battened down the hatches, maintained radio silence and did not inform Haase, presumably in case the message was intercepted and was used as further evidence to link them the two gangs. It was good organised crime practice, but it also meant that Haase carried on committing crimes unaware that the ‘busies were onto him’.
* * *
PAUL: Even I didn’t know that Kirkwood had been nicked. So it was business as usual. About two weeks later I had a big argument with Haase. It was over a ridiculous thing. Basically, there was a feller who was robbing the old paving stones from the Dock next door. These flags were worth a fortune and every day he did it he gave me £1,000 for not grassing him up to the owners. I gave five tonne to Haase. But the greedy twat wanted more.
Could you believe it? The fucking tank he was on with his heroin and Uzi fucking machine guns. But that’s what these fellers are like. They want a piece of even the most trivial of crimes. He told me to stop the men from having them off and I told him to do it himself. He exploded and I told him to stick his job up his arse.
By then it didn’t matter to Customs too much that I had quit. The surveillance was picking up everything and I had a feeling it was all coming to an end anyway.
* * *
He wasn’t wrong. One month later, on 25 October, Haase was arrested at Liverpool Lime Street train station after returning from a trip to London. In a huge and detailed Customs and police undercover surveillance operation, officers had followed Haase and a drugs mule called Kenneth Darcy as they left Liverpool from Lime Street station earlier that day. Even the men sitting in the Railtrack ticket booth who sold Haase his train ticket were undercover officers. So were the cleaners who mopped the forecourt and the guards on the train.
Haase and Darcy travelled in the first-class carriage. Under Haase’s instructions, their journey was being monitored by No-Neck, whose job it was to see if Haase was being followed. After arriving in Euston, Haase made a call from a telephone kiosk to a mobile phone before both he and Darcy caught a black cab to a Turkish restaurant in Stoke Newington, north London. It was clear that Haase’s Turkish Connection was still going strong.
Upon arrest Haase had more than £3,000 in cash, mostly made up of Scottish notes, while in the lining of Darcy’s coat a plastic BHS bag was recovered containing a kilo of heroin – 984 grams to be precise. It was the end of Haase.
27
* * *
The Case
On 26 October 1999 more arrests were made during a police raid at Haase’s Dock office at the Stanley Heritage Market. The following day he was charged with conspiring to supply heroin in relation to the kilo police had tracked from London.
A separate firearms offence stated that ‘on 7 September this year in Liverpool, he conspired with other persons to possess or sell prohibited weapons, prohibited ammunition and Section One ammunition, contrary to the Weapons Law Act 1977’.
Ken Darcy, the drugs mule Haase had travelled to London with, was charged with drugs offences. Paul’s son and Haase’s main lieutenant, Heath Grimes, was also charged with firearms offences, as was Barry Oliver, who had allegedly been in the Dock on the day of the gun transaction. Oliver was in a bad situation. At the time of the offences he was out of prison on Home Office licence after being convicted of manslaughter. He had set a man on fire. If found guilty, Oliver would automatically be sentenced to life.
The situation was further complicated because Haase’s right-hand man Paul Bennett was wanted in connection with a £1 million cannabis importation. Over the next few months the case became a stock exchange of plea bargains and deals, as some of the parties, awed by the level of secret intelligence against them, desperately battled to get the shortest sentences possible. But Haase and Heath were in for a bigger shock. When it dawned on them that Paul Grimes was the secret informant, the grass, they could not believe it. A lifelong friend to one and father to the other.
Haase first realised that Paul had betrayed him when police unearthed a secret cache of guns hidden underneath a floorboard in an old warehouse next to his office. The warehouse was so vast that Haase was convinced that only a tip-off could have led police to the specific hiding place. The only other person who knew the secret location was Paul Grimes. He had been there when Haase had buried them. Paul had kept look-out and blocked the doorway into the huge room as Haase had pulled up a floorboard and stashed the weapons in the cavity underneath.
As the interviewing police officers asked Haase whether the guns were his, his heart sank. ‘How the fuck did they find them,’ he asked himself. There was only one explanation. He’d been turned over. In a weak and unconvincing rebuttal, Haase limply tried to say that the guns were not his but actually owned by Paul Grimes. Deep down though he knew he was in deep trouble.
On the drugs-related charge Haase felt more confident. The great irony of the bust was that the kilo of heroin found on drugs mule Kenneth Darcy was not technically Haase’s. Chris No-Neck had set up the deal. No-Neck had been badgering Haase to get him a kilo of brown in the run-up to the trip. Haase had first visited the Turks in London on Saturday 23 October, two days before he was busted, to talk business and pick up one kilo. But he agreed to get a second kilo of heroin for No-Neck as a favour on the following Monday. The Turks had been informed that on the Monday a courier would arrive at their cafe to pick up the parcel.
The following day, Sunday, Haase had told No-Neck that the heroin would be ready for him. Haase explained that although he would be travelling to London again on the train on Monday, he wanted Darcy to go by coach so that there was no connection between them. However, on the Monday Darcy missed the National Express coach after No-Neck gave him the wrong times.
