Powder Wars (12 page)

PAUL: The meeting was set up to take place in a side street off've Prescott Road. They said that they'd pull up in a car and two of us would jump in the back seat and we could have a cosy gab, sat off there. The deal was that there was to be no back-up. Just two of them, one of their top boys, a gangster, let's say he's called Fred, and a sidekick, and two of us, my good self and Johnny One Eye, as well as a driver, of course.

I decided on not taking a armament. Did not need one with these beauts. Also, I wanted to try and keep it purely business. But I did tell my brother Stephen, who would be driving me, to get a big heavy motor so that he could ram them off've the street if they turned Turk. He lent a big fuck-off white Jag off've the Lambies, an outfit who, most ironically, I was at war with at the time, but our Stephen was still coolio with. So he blagged it off've them, saying it was for a caper or whatever. Just right for the job, it was, of juggernauting an enemy vehicle into oblivion. Spanker and all too, by the way. Which was a shame, mind you, seeing as the only reason we didn't want to use one of our own top-of-the-range jalopies was because there was a good chance it was getting purely written off, in an ontop ball of highly evidential flames, with fried gangsters stuck to the burnt out wreckage and that.

So we drove down. It was an overcast, autumn night. Bit of wind and elecky in the air and that. We pulled up by the Fairfield pub. They pulled up in a Ford Cortina. In it was Fred and his sidekick, a pure gobshite called Tony Murray. Murray owned a garage in the South End. He thought he was a bit of a mediator, a bit of a thinking man's villain who could straighten out to-dos such as this between the savages by behaving as the voice of reason. Dickhead, he was.

Put simply he was a shithouse. Just a big shitbag who thought he was hard because he knocked around with these people. He'd started off at the bottom of the crime ladder and worked his way up, so to speak. He'd started off as a gofer for Billy Grimwood's wife Joan Mellor, who was a shoplifter, and he used to run her round and run cash and swag to and from the fences and that. He virtually moved in with her, but there was no funny business. We thought he swung both ways, a bit cake, knowmean? Didn't bother me like, but he got loads off've the lads for it. He used to stink as well. The cunt never got a bath. I mean NEVER. I remembered that our Stephen had butted him all round the place and threw him through a pub window a few months before.

Just then another Ford Cortina pulls up on the opposite side of the road, behind Fred's car, with four fellers in it. No sweat. Enemy forces and that. I says to our Stephen, who was driving the Jag: ‘If that moves, ram it off the face of the earth and make sure those four fellas are going nowhere. Squash the cunts for all I care.'

He's like that, grinning and foaming, quite clearly relishing the prospect: ‘Is right,' he says. ‘Any devilment and it's curtains and that for the Cortina crew.'

Both me and Johnny One Eye slides into the backseat of the other working-man's Rolls Royce with Fred in it. I says to Fred: ‘What do you wanna do?'

Fred says: ‘We'll have a chat and see where it goes.'

‘Sound,' I says, ‘but if there's any misbehaviour from your four mates in the Cortina then everyone goes, knowmean? Straight to Valhalla, with me?'

The fuckers then had the gall to turn round and say that the Cortina crew weren't with them. So there's a bit a panto banter: Yes, they are/No, they aren't, etc. Which was très boring, by the way. Meanwhile Johnny One Eye, who is itching to get down to business, pulls out a gun. Without my knowledge, in all truthfulness, but bad news any whichways.

One Eye says: ‘I don't give a fuck whether they are with yous or not. If there's any behaviour out of them, yous'll get fucking this.'

With that he brandishes the gun at Murray's grid. Goes without saying that Murray's arse completely goes. Now we'd got their undivided no-bullshit attention. Mind you, I was a bit pissed off with Johnny for pulling a stunt like that, all the same. I was looking at him, like: ‘What the fuck are you doing? I'm in charge here.'

But he's lost, la. High off've the smell of blood and foaming at the mouth. These hotheads, la, they love these go-arounds. You couldn't have a business chat with a guy like that. You just didn't know where he was going. Going to a sit-down, you could end up fighting for your life. A pure hothead, One Eye was. A psychopath.

So now I had several variables to deal with. Not only did I have Fred and Murray to contend with, keeping them sweet and listening to what they've got to say, but I had to make sure that Johnny was under control. One moody move, one slight – no matter how small or mistaken – could result in a pure massacre here. Brains all over the dash and that. And he'd do it, One Eye, no two ways. There and then. Bang! Bang! Johnny would pop them here and now and not be arsed. Pop into Fairfield for a pint afterwards, too, he would. He was a hairline trigger, this guy.

So I had to tread carefully, diplomatically, hostage-trained speak, knowmean? Work towards bringing this palaver to a close as quickly and as smoothly as possible. But there's not much material to use here, by any stretch. It's all monosyllabic gangster behaviour and sly looks in the mirror.

Just then Fred throws me a bone, a window of opportunity, if you will. I'd come to this meeting thinking that Fred had the same worries as me: to avoid all-out war. But it seems, on balance, that he's more worried about the busies. The busies, for God's sake! He must have had something hanging over his head. Trouble with the law must have meant he'd be looking at some jug. Get paid, I thought.

So I plays it cool, not letting on that I don't give a fuck about plod, thus investing me with some free bargaining power, ta very much.

Fred says: ‘I have heard that you're giving a statement to the busies.'

What? Me? Is this beaut brand new or what? Me, talking to the busies. About this load of bollocks. But I went with it. Pure blanker, I gave him. Giving him absolutely nothing to work with. My best poker face.

‘And the owner. The bloke I twatted with the glass, he's making a statement, isn't he?' he went on.

Fred lad. Don't ever go into the negotiating business 'cos you're fucking last.

‘I could well do without that,' Fred said, pathetically, in all fairness, his head half-down and that.

Now I knew where he was going. A GPS could not have given me a better route map to his wants and needs. For some reason he was shitting his Lois jeans (that's what these urchins were wearing at the time for some reason) over the busies. He was probably looking to box me off. Give me a dropsy for not turning up and that. Crude, la, crude, to say the least. Who did he think I was? Some kind of fucking nugget. A fucking snake's rag-arse like hisself. That was it with these bucks, they had zero fucking respect. They judged everyone by their own very low dirty-rat bastard standards. But I maintained a pure dignified silence. Let the prick sweat. He was gifting me a top outro here, a pure Dayton peace plan pleasing to all parties, weren't costing me nothing and I was gonna walk away with the prick shaking my hand and telling me what a boss feller I was. Gangsters against the world and all that carry-on, knowmean? Laughing, la, I was.

‘I know,' I says, holding his stare and that so he thinks I'm a serious stand-up guy who's telling the truth and really wants to waste time being here. ‘The busies are all over us. They want you bad, la. They are putting pure pressure on us to turn you over.'

Lie, by the way, but so what? No way I was getting into heaven anyway. This whole fucking skenario was pure drama over substance anyway. The owner had told me earlier that there was no way he was pressing charges and all that carry on, but of course Joey did not know that. ‘Well, what are you going to do about it?' he droned.

Pure showing his hand by now, he was. The fool. He had that look on his face like a feller who was asking someone not to tell his tart about an affair he was having. By the bollocks, I had him.

‘Listen, I'll make it easy for you 'cos I do not have the time for this malarkey. Stay out of my club and I'll straighten the owner out. The busie thing will disappear.'

Fred's like that, near fucking exploding with excitement: ‘What do you mean?' Sliding around the plazzy seats, like he's a big kid.

I said: ‘I've just told you. I'm not prepared to give a statement. I'll make sure the owner doesn't. I'm giving you a walkover. As long as you leave off've the venues.'

He's like that, pure made up, as though I've just granted him his freedom. As though this was a really big deal. Strange, la, but true. We shook on it and got off. Double result there, me thinks. Number One: averted war and kept the business safe for Billy and Nash. Number Two: got the meeting over without Johnny One Eye blowing the heads of these two pricks all over the PVC seats. Was half thinking at one point of how I was going to have to crush the Cortina with the bodies in it to get rid of evidence, if it come to that. Funny what goes through your mind when you're in a situation like that. Forward planning mostly.

Overall, I couldn't believe what a big waste of time it had been. But that was it with a lot of these villains. They were always frittering time away on shit matters such as trying to persuade someone to drop the charges on some fucking trivial matter or other. That's why most of them end up skint, in my book.

A few days later Johnny One Eye tells me that Fred would like another meeting. I told him I'd see him in the Farmer's pub on Upper Breck Road. I gets there. Fred's acting like he's my new best mate. The beaut. He buys me a drink. But I fuck him off and tells him that I'll buy my own. You've got to treat this lot like birds, knowmean? Treat 'em mean and all that.

‘Don't be nasty,' he says. Which half-amused me, in all fairness. Maybe I was not giving this one all he was due. Maybe, he could see through my tough-guy act and was a bit post-ironic hisself. The next thing he's thanking me for not giving evidence. As though I'm arsed, by the way. Was getting bored of this by now to tell you the truth.

So I said: ‘Listen, I don't like you so let's forget all this nonsense and go our separate ways.'

He started laughing, shook me hand and said he admired me. But it wasn't a big, mad bonhomie moment. I just got off into the night.

I remember that there was a lot of incidents like these. Pure timewasters. A drain on my resources, they were. They didn't make me any dough. They didn't advance my cause. They just went with the territory. I guess it was the price of being high profile. It was like being the boss of a big company and being dragged into meetings all day, knowmean? The only thing is, when you're a gangster you don't have a PA to filter out the shit from the big decisions which will get you paid. You've got to bounce around your patch like a feudal lord, dishing out instant justice, etc., and being seen, and being king of the patch and all that carry on.

The next crew to have a go were the Lambs. They were a pretty heavy crew. They'd got into protecting all of the Liverpool showbiz stars of the day, many of whom were completely unaware that they were dealing with the underworld – Ken Dodd, Tom O'Connor, Cilla, all the pop groups that came to town and that. Payments being made for ‘security' were going straight to the lambs. If you wanted to shoot a TV programme, a sitcom or a film, and there was a lot at the time with
The Liver Birds
, and Alan Bleasdale and
Boys from the Blackstuff
, and Willy Russell and
Blood Brothers
and
One Summer
and what have you, you'd have to pay them first or all of your camera gear would go west ASAP. They controlled all that. It was a good screw.

On top of that, they had a little fiddle on the side. They'd turn the stars over they were supposed to be protecting and sell big stories to the papers. That's how it came on top for Tom O'Connor with the prostitutes. They'd sort out a brass for his room, but also tell the
News of the World
who'd be sitting in the next hotel room. Get paid, the Lambies. But now they were looking to get into clubland as well.

One night a crew of six of them comes into Caesar's and starts snarling at the owners, making demands on them, saying that they're going to petrol bomb the club if they don't get dough. Usual stuff, but very crude if you ask me. They'd chosen that night purely because it's my night off, but I gets the call and bombs down there with Mick Cairns. I orders a pint and stands right next to them at the bar, staring and snarling back and just laughing at them. They gets the message and fuck off.

Later that night they come back with cans of petrol, swords, a metal gear lever, a rubber mallet and a foot-long metal bar. Mick and I battered all six of them. Just purely done them in just with our fists. In all fairness, Mick got chopped up with the sword across the back. They went to finish him off and slit his throat but he ran through a fire escape onto the roof and leant on the door behind him. Even after the cavort had ended, we had to smash down the door onto the roof because he wouldn't open it. He was terrified for his life. I booted each one of them down the stairs and to add to their humiliation the busies were waiting in the street to nick them.

I was like that: ‘Bye, bye. Later, lads. Yes, see you later.' Just buzzing off them, we were. It was like the end of
Scooby Doo
when the villains are being bowed into the police cars and are scowling at their captors. Amateurs they were. Amateurs. All six of the beauts were charged with affray and carrying offensive weapons and for the protection bit they were charged with making threats and causing fear to the club premises. Definitely a lesson on how not to racketeer in clubland, that one. It proved to them that being a gangster is one thing, but making it on the doors is another, with me?