Powder Wars, page 6
The Fitzgibbons family were coming back in. Even though I’d had murder with them I’d met a couple of them in prison on remand for something or other and we’d made up, but they were always kicking fuck out of people in there for no reason. I could never understand that.
On the first night they were allowed back in I found them kicking fuck out of someone on the door. I dragged one of these Fitzys into the toilet along with the feller they were twatting and stood between them. I couldn’t work this Fitzy out. He talked with an American accent. You do get a lot of eccentrics in the underworld, in all fairness, but you’d get that in those days especially. People would go to the States on the boats or what have you and come back thinking they’re Steve McQueen, knowmean?
So he’d started talking in an American accent. I told him: ‘You’re not a yank. You’re just one of us, you little tosser. Remember I used to protect you when you were on remand. I don’t want any messing about in my club.’
Afterwards Mick’s like that: ‘Bad one, la. Do you know who that is? You’re going to bring it ontop talking gangster to that lot.’
‘Mick,’ I said. ‘Forget about them beauties now. There’s a proper gangster in town now, knowmean?’
Mick’s still looking a bit half thingy though. Arse had gone, to be fair.
To keep things under control I put Joey Duvall on the door. I didn’t mind all his behaviour as long as it didn’t interfere with business, knowmean? At least he provided somewhere for the boys to sit and talk and not be interrupted.
Paul Conteh’s firm were planning a big job in the Oslo. There was four of them; Paul, two brothers George and John Brown and Michael Maloney. They were all from Kirby. I didn’t rate them much, in all fairness. They were typical of the new breed of armed robbers coming up, chancers, if you will, but they were half-all-right fellers and they used to sit in the corner and play crib whilst scheming on their big job. No hassle, knowmean?
It was going to be a bit of a mini Great Train Robbery. The plan was that they were going to rob a mail train chocca with registered goodies from London at a remote railway station on Bodmin Moor in Cornwall. They’d got the idea after John had lived with the postman in Cornwall for a few weeks. And for about three months they sat in Oslo planning it.
Good plan and that, lads. But not going to happen for youse clowns. I only let them sit in the Oslo ’cos Joey asked me. I also warned him to tell his mates to give the work to someone who could hangle it, but they wouldn’t listen and one day in July they set off for Cornwall. About two days later I heard they’d been nicked by a roadblock. The pricks had got pissed before the job and held up the wrong train.
Dickheads or what? Paul got three years and the others got fours and fives. I told Joey to stop letting in beauts like that, but by then he had started to think he was bit of a boy and that hisself, which he half was, to be fair. He gave Mick Cairns, the other lad on the door, a good hiding, to show him who’s boss. To be fair, Mick had had a few drinks and was easy to take advantage of. I was too busy out grafting to put Joey under manners for it, which I should have, mind you, but it’s fucking murder getting on top of these office politics. It’d take up most of your working day to solve just a few of these fucking playground disputes. So I told Mick to let it go.
‘It doesn’t make you any dough, all this palaver, does it? Let’s get on with business,’ I said to him.
The door was a bit tense for a few days after that, to be fair. Then to clear the air Mick and Joey Duvall decided to have a straightener, but in the khazi of all places. ‘Bit daft that,’ I thought. Mick got his leg caught in a pipe. Duvall held him down and took a running jump onto his knee. Just snapped in half like a lolly ice stick. Then he pummelled fuck out his grid. Looked like a dead body, in fairness, Mick did, afterwards. Could not let that go, at all, by the way.
I gets the call informing me of this incident while I was in a meeting with Billy Grimwood. I’d been on the missing list for a few days – away on business with the Hole in the Wall crew. I’d just got back and Billy was filling me in on another bit of business. A big crew from London wanted to ‘invest’ a lot of dough into a large slice of Liverpool nightlife. So Billy was putting together a meeting between a handful of the city’s nightclub owners and this London firm’s top boy, a feller called Johnny Nash, who was heading north on the rattler.
There was a strong possibility of a go-around, so me and Billy were sorting out the security arrangements, so as to offer maximum protection for this Londoner. Not that Johnny Nash needed it. Johnny was huge in London at the time, super-heavyweight, if you will and he could hangle himself. Billy just wanted to make sure that all went smoothly, knowmean? No hassle off’ve beauts and that.
So I could have done without all of this squabbling doormen carry on, but I knew I had to do Joey in good and proper for his troubles and I figured that I could drive down to the Oslo, twat Joey, and get back to Billy in time to finalise the arrangements. Mick turns up. He’s out of ozzie already and ten hours into a bender, his head wrecked with all this. I bought him a bottle of Bacardi to keep him happy.
Then I phones the Oslo and orders the lads to keep Joey ‘Tony fucking Montana’ Duvall there, jumps in the jalopy and goes the Oslo. The lads are saying that Joey’s going nowhere; he’s settled in for the night and is too busy holding court and telling everyone how great he is. As I pulled into the car park I was half-thinking of running and smashing Joey’s head on the bar, straightaway, no back answers, but I thought I’ll see what the beaut’s got to say first.
When I arrived Joey got right on his high horse, thinking he was it. As though it’s his fucking boozer, by the way. Half-taking me for a cunt, he was, to be fair. So it’s bang, bang. Punches fuck out of Joey and gets him on the floor, ready to break his legs, but Mick intervenes – he wasn’t into that. So I tells Joey I want a straightener in the car park pronto, a one-on-one right now. Both strip off to the waist, pure WWF and get it on. A few digs and he’s in bits, to be fair. Like a lot of these so-called hard men, he couldn’t pull a punch. He was too fat. He was one fat cunt, in all fairness. I purely knocked fuck out him without breaking sweat. He goes down, just as the busies arrive on cue, so I grabs my shirt and gets off back to see Billy. End of.
So the meeting with the cockney is set up for the next day. Billy meets him off the train at Lime Street. He’s all right Johnny Nash. Allday he is. Looks the business, like all of these cockney gangster types always do. Loads of gangster greetings and all that carry on. Goes a bit Chaz out of Performance on us, to be fair, which I’m into, by the way. He has us laughing straightway, though.
He tells us that to get out London he had to change cars three times and switch trains. It’s that ontop for him, in all fairness. The busies are trying to crucify him and following him all over the show. So it makes it double difficult to travel. But there’s a serious underlying point to all this as well – if it’s that hard for Nash to move around then it makes these meetings extra flippin’ important, knowmean?
We walk over to the Big House, a boozer opposite the station. All of the Liverpool club owners are sat round a big table in a circle. Pure Appalachian, knowmean? Behind each owner was their teams, sat off, keeping an eye out and that. A lot of them were carrying. Could just tell. They were a bit thingy with us. I noticed Tommy Comerford was there. He was a heavyweight armed robber juiced into the nightclub scene like no one’s business, but he’s quite funny with it, a good laugh and that, so he’s putting everyone at ease with his banter and that. I sat right behind Billy. I didn’t need a shooter. I knew most of these mushers and they knew there’d be untold if they made a show of Billy in front of his posh mates and that.
Billy and the main boys started talking. The jist of the meeting was that this London crowd were offering top dollar for the four biggest clubs in Liverpool. They were going to take over, give Billy a slice and do them up. New bars, new decor, new windows – the lot and they wanted a sit down with the local gaultiers and that to make sure there’d be no noses out of joint, knowmean? Good manners, in all fairness. Very civilised, our southern friends are, to be fair.
Johnny lived up to his nickname, ‘The Peacemaker’, by brokering a good deal for them. Billy was to help himself to two separate clubs as a sweetener for him, to make sure that the deal went through. There was no way anyone could refuse. Nash controlled the West End in London. Liverpool was small fry to him, in fairness. Nash had a massive protection racket going in the Smoke. All the big West End clubs coughed up and the dough was split three ways – between him, the Kray twins and Freddy Foreman. I remember Billy telling me that the alliance nearly went tits up after the Krays caned that Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie, because he was related to Johnny’s top boy. But I could never be arsed with gangster gossip and I just took Johnny as I found him – which was dead fair.
There was few grumbles from these Liverpool club owners. Obviously, some of them would have liked to have cherry-picked these venues for themselves and obviously tarted-up clubs makes their paint jobs and that obsolete, doesn’t it? So it’s a bit of a sickener for them, in all honesty, but the deal had been sanctioned from way high up, so there’s fuck all they can do. Rubber stamped. End of. Meeting closed. Ding ding. Let’s get knees-upping.
We’re having a good craic, to be fair. All of the boys are there. Loads of birds and that. Everything’s allday. At about one o’clock we go to a club and Billy introduces one of the boys to Nash. Suddenly this feller goes to Billy: ‘What are you introducing me to him for, the cockney cunt?’
Bit outers, to be fair, I thought. Rude and that. But they don’t like people poking their noses in up north, as the line goes. This feller shouting the odds was a bit of a scallywag, in all fairness, and he didn’t like the fact that these cockneys were throwing their weight around on his manor. But times were changing, weren’t they? I was ready to knock him out, in fairness, but Nash steps up to him and gives it the ‘I like a bit of a cavort’ routine and pulls out a pistol. An automatic it was. Nice it was as well. Like mine, la ’cept mine had pearl hangles, knowmean?
‘Do you know who I am?’ Nash says. The scallywag’s arse has gone a bit to be fair, with the shooter and that. He done one from the club sharpish. About an hour later the doorman come over and says that the scallywag is outside with a sawn-off wanting a fucking showdown with the Cockney or something. High noon or what, la. Quite fancied a bit of gun-slinging entertainment to round the night off, to be fair, but we just told the doorman to fuck him off in the hope that he’d cool off and come to his senses.
No way, la, would this cunt listen. Next minute, the big window in the club shatters. Bang! Bang! Bang! He’s pumping rounds into the club pure Michael Ryan-style. Windows are going in left right and centre. Like a film, la. Pure Wild Bunch, knowmean? Ricochets off the plaster, the works. To be truthful, I’m buzzing, but there’s pure mass hysteria, especially with the birds, and that. You can smell the cordite. The cunt’s still going, thinking he’s James Cagney, and that. Reload! Bang! Bang! Reload! All hands are going for their armaments, but there’s no point, he’s got them pinned down.
Billy’s like that to Nash, buzzing with him: ‘Don’t worry Johnny. Your investment is safe with us. Safe as houses Liverpool is.’
Johnny goes with it, to be fair: ‘Do any of you scaairce cunts know where I buy some bullet-proof glass? That’s the first thing on my shopping list for my new clubs.’
We’re all in bulk at this, to be fair. There’s a busie siren in the background. The scally stops shooting up the club and gets off. We dusted ourselves down and got off to another club. The scally with the sawn-off got nicked, by the way. His name was Syd Tollett. Eight years he got himself, for blowing the windows in. Could never understand that type of behaviour.
After Nash went back to London and that, it was Billy’s responsibility to make sure that the Cockneys got their parcel of dough every month. It got taken down on the last Sunday of every month – no back answers, no excuses, get paid or get off to South America and don’t come back. Pure grands there was in there. Me and Billy got our due, goes without saying, for making sure it had a smooth trip, etc. Making sure it didn’t leave the train unauthorisedly at any other point than Euston, knowmean? Sometimes Billy would take it down himself, so he could go on the piss and hit the casinos and that, which he loved, by the way.
Nash came up four times in total after that. The script was always the same. He’d come into the Oslo to see me. I’d take him around all the Liverpool clubs and then we’d head back the Oslo at two o’clock. Billy would turn up and him and Nash would talk business all night.
6
* * *
The Scrapman’s Gang
Paul’s next big scam was a multi-million pound construction racket. He masterminded the large-scale theft and re-sale of thousands of tonnes of building materials, scrap metal and mechanical plant from all over the UK. It was big business and until that time a largely unknown crime. The post-war building boom was in full swing. Billions of pounds were being poured into the construction industry – high-rise flats, new towns, new hospitals, motorways, pedestrianised town centres, industrial estates, even new railways – all manner of projects were going up at breakneck speed, with seemingly scant regard for the protection of assets.
Paul was quick to recognise a gap in the market. On-site security was relatively poor, and as far as competition from other criminal gangs was concerned, it was untouched, wide-open virgin territory. ‘Get paid,’ he thought, as he surveyed the miles and miles of valuable but unguarded materials that lined the work-in-progress M62 motorway, the subject of his early ‘market research’.
For the job, Paul brought together the Scrapman’s Gang, a small band of criminals, like himself, with good contacts in the haulage and scrap trades. He had a fleet of trucks at his disposal and he bought a scrap metal business as cover. The Scrapman’s Gang’s first target was the under-construction motorways. As fast as the contractors could lay the miles and miles of steel-erected reinforcements for the roads and bridges, the gang were able to rip them up and spirit them away.
Night after night they returned, often to the same section of road, to steal the mesh structures that had been put in place that day or to remove the huge bails of freshly delivered steel rods that lay at the side of the foundation ditches. The gang moved on to stealing bulk loads of steel girders from industrially sized construction sites and then onto dismantling whole steel-framed buildings piece-by-piece using powerful oxy-acetylene burners, cranes and mechanical pulleys.
Many of the buildings were brand-new factory and warehouse complexes covering several acres and worth millions of pounds. In a fraction of the time they took to erect, they were pulled down or left standing supported only by a dangerously minimal structure, carefully left in place like a giant optical illusion to allow the gang to make a clean getaway.
* * *
PAUL: After the Hole in the Wall gang I took a year off from what I called full-time work – the organised robbing of warehouses night after night. Wearing me down, la, it was, to be truthful. Was also getting a bit para with the busies and that too with the lads getting a bit slovenly of late.
‘Quit while you’re ahead,’ that’s what I always said. This was going to be my gap year, if you will. A time to chill out and ponder about the future. I looked forward to these little furloughs, in all fairness. It got me thinking that I might have preferred my life more if I’d gone straight. In fact, I used to imagine how sound it would be just to have an ordinary job, like everyone else.
To be honest, I used to fantasise about it. About getting up and going to a factory and that. Weird I know, but it used to give me a warm feeling. It goes without saying that I had well enough dough stashed away from all the devilment to keep me going for a long, long time during a crime-free period. There was also the Oslo, which was ticking over just nice. It was throwing up half-decent bits of work every so often – one offs and that, to be fair. Also, under the good husbandry and stewardship of my good self and the wife, my legit businesses were beginning to reap in some half-decent wages as well. Nothing mad, but wages is wages at the end of the day.
Taking long holidays here and there was something I’ve often done throughout my criminal career. Get a good score and go straight for six months. It was something all of us did: Billy, Ritchie, Ronnie, even my auld feller and that. Even if me dad got £20,000 out of a safe, he’d be out tarmacing or whatever the following week or doing the demolition or whatever. Keeping things looking normal to the outside world.
It did us good, these straight-goer breaks, because more often than not it was a chance to get into some other legit business. Was also a good opportunity to get the busies off’ve our backs and all, too. We were always under surveillance for something or other and the busies were always TO’ing [turning over] my kennel looking for swag.
As if, by the way. By that time we had a good network of lockups and safe houses and that, even our own little warehouses well out the way and that. Those early morning calls were most unnecessary. In all of their relentless searches, the busies could never get nothing. Frustrated to fuck, they were. To wind me up they’d confiscate my cars saying that they could forensic them or what have you. Just harassment and that, but no use whinging about it. The police couldn’t prove nothing, but they were definitely getting wise to the Hole in the Wall and being a straight-goer for a while meant that they had to take you off their target list. They couldn’t justify putting a van on your plot if you weren’t committing crime. But no matter how comforting time out was, it was never long before the urge to get up to no good came back.
