Essex Boy (8 page)

Thoughts of sleep were soon forgotten when I saw that my front door was wide open. Calling out to anybody who might have been inside I entered the flat and looked around each room. Whoever had been there had gone, but they had left the distinct smell of cigarette smoke and two dirty glasses in the sink, one of which was broken. I don’t know why, but I automatically assumed that I had been burgled by the man who lived directly above me. I armed myself with a hammer, knocked on the man’s door and when he answered demanded to know what he had been doing in my home. When the man denied ever setting foot in my property, I grabbed him by the throat and threatened to hit him in the face with the hammer unless he told me the truth. Still the man denied ever being in my home, so I walked back down the stairs mumbling incoherently and cursing the scum that commit burglary.

The following weekend, Tate asked me if I had any amino acid capsules, which bodybuilders take for protein, and so I gave a handful to him.

‘These are no good, they are out of date,’ he said after inspecting them.

I knew that there was nothing wrong with the capsules and so, when Tate suggested that I should try a couple myself, I agreed, just to prove that they were OK. Unbeknown to me, Tate had emptied the capsules and refilled them with ketamine. I can recall beginning to feel light-headed. The people in the room with me, whose faces became blurred, were laughing at me, but after that everything else is little more than a hazy memory.

I did not know it at the time, but Tate had deliberately drugged me in the hope that he could goad me into murdering a man. As the ketamine capsules began to render me totally incapable of being able to rationalise or think for myself, Tucker and Tate confided in me that one of Tate’s cousins and a doorman I’ll call Ron Redding had been the men in my flat, waiting for me to come home. It had been their intention, Tate said, to confront me about the burglary at the gym and cut my right hand off as punishment.

Fortunately for me, the safe at the supermarket had kept me out until the early hours of the morning and they had tired of waiting and gone home. Tate leaned forward in his seat, embraced me and then whispered in my ear that I should kill Redding. I was completely out of my mind on the drug and Tate quite easily convinced me that it was a good idea.

I can vaguely remember Tucker holding my video camera and laughing, he kept saying to Tate, ‘Be careful what you say. I’m taping him.’ They must have been drugged up too because Tate began pulling faces for the camera and was chanting, ‘Kill him, Nipper. Kill him.’ There was a 2.2 handgun in my flat that one of the firm had used in a shooting. Tucker handed me the weapon and said that if I was a ‘proper person’ I would shoot Redding. Almost zombie-like, I took the gun from Tucker, got into my car and went in search of the man my so-called friends had urged me to execute.

I knew that Redding worked as a doorman at a pub near Leigh-on-Sea and so I drove up and down the street trying to catch sight of him. I saw Redding’s car parked outside the pub and so I pulled up further down the road, but at a place where I could still keep my eye on it. When Redding eventually finished his shift and left the pub, I followed him at a discreet distance. I knew that he lived in Basildon and so I began to try to think of suitable places where I could force his car to stop so that I could get out and shoot him. Without indicating, Redding’s car suddenly slewed across the road and pulled up outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken store. I couldn’t stop without drawing attention to myself and so I drove past Redding’s vehicle and pulled up about 100 yards away.

Five minutes later, Redding’s car flashed past me. Catching just a fleeting glimpse of the driver I was unsure if it was in fact Redding at the wheel. Confused by the drugs that I had unwittingly taken I decided to pull alongside the vehicle on a stretch of dual carriageway to see if my intended target was at the wheel. As I looked across at Redding, he looked back to see who the lunatic was who had so obviously been following him. In a blind panic I applied my brakes and let Redding take the lead once more. When Redding pulled up outside his home, I turned into an adjacent road and began checking that the gun was fully loaded.

A short sharp tap at my window startled me and when I looked out Redding’s puzzled face was gazing back at me. ‘All right, Nipper, what are you up to?’ he asked. I knew that Redding would have armed himself with something before approaching my car and so I didn’t dare risk pointing the gun at him.

‘I’m looking for Henry,’ I replied. Redding had a friend named Henry and so he asked me what I wanted him for. ‘I don’t know but I better go and find him,’ I said before starting the car and driving off. The drugs were beginning to wear off by the time I had pulled up outside my flat. Tate had gone to bed and Tucker had left. I couldn’t believe that I had planned to shoot Redding, a decent man who to my personal knowledge had never intended to cause me any harm.

My head was pounding because of the drugs Tate had given me and so I went straight to bed. When I awoke later that afternoon and went into the lounge, I saw that my flat was a complete mess. I am an extremely tidy person who likes everything in my home to be in order and so I was absolutely livid. Tate had recently held parties at my flat without my permission or prior knowledge but this mess hadn’t been caused by a party; it could only be described as an orgy of destruction.

When I went into the bathroom, I found two naked teenage prostitutes in the shower, used syringes scattered around the floor and empty champagne bottles in the bath. I threw the girls out and after barging into Tate’s bedroom began shouting about him taking the piss out of me. Tate, who was barely able to focus on me because he was so drugged up, didn’t appear to even realise why I was so upset. When I began to tidy up my flat, I found a bag containing my kettle, a toaster and various other electrical goods. I had no idea why either Tate or Tucker would have put them in the bag. I certainly didn’t think that they had planned to steal them. Before I could ask Tate, he left the flat with his two prostitutes in tow.

The following morning I opened the drawer in my bedroom to get some underpants. Hidden among my clothing I found a black leather bag stuffed with drugs and money. I was livid. Tate had hidden his drug stash in my room so if the police raided the house I would be accused of possession. He had not yet returned home and so I walked into his bedroom and packed his meagre possessions into a suitcase and left it by the front door. When he came home and saw the suitcase in the hall, he asked what I was up to.

‘You hid drugs in my fucking room. I don’t want you or your drugs in my flat. You’re a junkie and you don’t even know it,’ I shouted. Tate looked at the suitcase and back at me before replying.

‘I am no fucking junkie. I control the drugs, they don’t control me.’ Tate said that he had nowhere to go and pleaded with me to let him stay until he had sorted somewhere else out to live and, like a fool, I agreed. As I continued tidying up my flat I found a saucer in the lounge with what appeared to be cocaine on it. Tate had gone back out and so I tipped the powder in the sink and washed the saucer with boiling water. When Tate did arrive home that night, he was incoherent and barely able to stand and so he didn’t notice that his drugs had been disposed of.

The following morning, when I got out of bed, Tate had already left the flat. When I entered the lounge, I found a crack pipe and a cocaine-like substance on a saucer so I threw the pipe in the dustbin and washed the saucer. When Tate walked into the flat later that day, he was with his brother Russell. As soon as Tate saw me he began shouting about me throwing away £600 worth of crack cocaine.

‘Are you so fucked you don’t realise you are taking it? There was less than a gramme of that shit on the saucer,’ I said.

I reminded Tate that I thought that he had become a junkie and I didn’t want him or his drugs in my flat. Russell stood in the hallway without saying a word but when he took out a cigarette and went to light it I asked him not to do so. When he asked what my problem was, I explained that I did not smoke and therefore I did not like people doing so in my home. Russell put the cigarette in his mouth and asked me what I intended to do if he didn’t stop.

Before I could reply, somebody had knocked the door and I went to answer it. A man in a suit began telling me how meaningless my life must be without the particular product that he was selling and so I thanked him for his advice and closed the door. When I went back into the lounge, I saw that Tate and his brother had gone into the garden to smoke. Russell didn’t say any more about the subject and so I too chose not to raise it. However, when Russell left my flat, Tate astounded me by saying that if his brother had started fighting with me then he would have joined in on my side. Up, down, happy, angry or depressed, there was no longer any way of telling which Tate I was going to encounter on any given day because of his drug addiction.

Later the same day, Tucker’s friend Carlton Leach knocked on my door. Leach claimed that he had been involved in an altercation with a black guy while working on the door at a private party in Battersea, south London. Apparently the man had taken exception to the way Leach had treated him and rather foolishly returned firing a gun. I say ‘rather foolishly’ because Leach and several members of his door team had soon overpowered the man and beaten him mercilessly. The police were called and after Leach had agreed to make a formal statement against the gunman he was arrested. During the fracas Leach’s vehicle had been shot several times and the police impounded it in the hope of gathering further evidence. I wasn’t sure why Leach had decided to pour his heart out to me and so I asked him how he thought that I could help.

‘It’s like this, Nipper. I desperately need a car to get back and forth to work in London,’ Leach said.

I had a second-hand red Ford Fiesta 1600 parked outside my home doing nothing, and so I said that he could take that. I had purchased the vehicle for my girlfriend, who was learning to drive. As she wasn’t due to take her test for two weeks I assumed that Leach would have returned it by then. The vehicle had not been taxed, so I gave Leach the log book and the money to tax it for me. While we were talking, I mentioned that my friend had just stolen a trailer full of quality leather jackets and he had given me 100 to sell on his behalf. Leach said that he would be able to sell 20 of them for me as a favour for loaning him the car. He picked 20 of the most expensive jackets, loaded them into the Fiesta and disappeared. I never saw the jackets or the vehicle again; I later learned that Tucker sold the car and the jackets the very same day.

At approximately 2200 hrs that night my house phone rang, and when I answered it Donna Garwood, Tucker’s 16-year-old mistress, asked me if I had seen him. I wasn’t in the mood for doing Tucker or his friends any favours and so I replied, ‘No, I have not seen him and nor do I particularly wish to see him. He is probably at home giving his missus one up the arse.’ I had never liked Garwood. She thought that she could talk to people how she wanted simply because she was Tucker’s bit on the side. I had awoken one morning to find her and Tucker asleep in the spare bedroom of my flat. I automatically assumed that it was his partner and that assumption was reinforced when I used to go to a house I assumed was Tucker’s and she was there. Only when Tucker invited me to his real home did I meet his partner, Anna, and discover that the other house was, in fact, Rolfe’s.

I am not the type of man that embraces deceit among alleged loved ones; my opinion of Garwood was therefore pretty low. As soon as I had told Garwood where Tucker might be she had slammed the phone down. Early the next morning, I was awoken by somebody hammering on my front door. Still half asleep, I opened it to find Tucker, Rolfe and a man named Peter Cuthbert standing outside. Without saying a word the three men walked into my home and when I asked them what they wanted Tucker made the sign of a gun with his two fingers against his head.

I assumed that he had come to pick up the 2.2 revolver that I had intended to shoot Redding with. I had wiped the weapon clean of all fingerprints since that night and hidden it in a cupboard, so I showed Tucker where it was. As soon as he had picked up the gun he grabbed my throat with his left hand, lifted me off the floor and shoved the weapon into my temple. Spitting phlegm he began screaming at me, ‘Fuck my missus up the arse, would you? Fuck my missus up the arse?’ After 20 or 30 seconds, Tucker shoved me into my bedroom and threw me on the bed. Sitting astride me he kept jabbing the barrel of the gun into my head and mouth and shouting, ‘I am going to show you what this can do.’ I could tell by the froth around his mouth and the crazed look in his eyes that he was high on crack cocaine. Tucker suddenly stopped shouting and ordered Rolfe to search the house for jewellery and anything else of value. He then took a butcher’s meat cleaver from inside his jacket and asked me if I would prefer to lose one of my hands or one of my feet. I thought that if he was going to sever one of my limbs I would at least survive the ordeal and so I could fucking shoot him. I am left-handed and so I held out my right hand, closed my eyes and waited for the searing pain.

When I had finished silently counting to ten, I realised that Tucker was not going to carry out his threat and so I opened my eyes. Tucker was standing over me, his eyes were bulging and he was grinning like a madman. After snapping out of the trance-like state that he was in Tucker put the meat cleaver back in his jacket, turned and walked away. I jumped off the bed and began shouting, ‘What the fuck have I done?’

Cuthbert held me back and repeatedly asked me to calm down but I was incensed. I pushed Cuthbert out of the way and went after Tucker. As he reached the front door he turned quickly, grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off the floor. Slamming me against a wall he pulled out the meat cleaver and threatened to bury it in my head. Cuthbert grabbed Tucker’s arm and pleaded with him to calm down.