Powder Wars (15 page)

It would have been worse if Dennis had killed him inside Caesar's. Luckily for us he had done the deed in the Kowloon. Kelly got life and McCormick went on the run for two years, where he survived dealing drugs under false names. He was eventually caught in London. The owners thought that they might lose the club over this caper, but they asked me to step in and sort it out. Make sure there was no comebacks. Take a bigger role running the place. Of course, I did. I was also taking over the doors on a lot of pubs as well. Any excuse would do.

Me wife Chrissy got a little job in a pub to get her out of indoors. It was a rough pub full of seriously heavyweight villains. It already had a door team. The manager was up the wall trying to keep an eye on these villains, who were always running amok, as well as his staff. One Sunday when I was minding the kids she come back, crying her eyes out saying that the head barman had called her a robber and all that carry on and sacked her. So I walked into the pub and this fat cunt was behind the bar and I said to him: ‘There is only one robber in my house and that's me. Don't accuse my wife of having the till off or I'll blow your pub up.'

All of these supposedly big-time villains who were there didn't like that I walked into their gaff and shouted the odds. I could have done them all in there and then and smashed the pub up, but to tell you the truth I couldn't be arsed. It's all a load of hassle. So I told the fat cunt to get the manager and I said to him: ‘If that fat cunt is here tonight I'm smashing the pub up.'

So that night I went in and the fat cunt wasn't there and neither was their door team who were too terrified to turn up. The manager asked what I would have done if the fat cunt was still there. I said that if he was here I would have done him and then I would have smashed the pub up. The manager, who was pissed off that his own team had not protected him said: ‘Nice one. You can have the door.'

So I took over the security of the pub. All the villains used to come in, like even the old timers Poppy Hayes and all that, and they knew me and they all respected me. So from then on there was never any hassle. So I just used to pop in a couple of times a week, have a look behind the bar, get me tank and fuck off. I was getting paid from a lot of pubs like that.

10

Straight-goer

It was 1985 and Paul had reached a crossroads in his life. He was pondering the unthinkable: to be or not to be a straight-goer. That was the question. One factor above all else had sparked a crisis of conscience at the age of 35 – drugs.

Since the mid '70s villains in Liverpool had been organising the large-scale importation and distribution of cannabis, heroin and cocaine. A fledgling cottage industry concerned with the manufacture of amphetamines and hallucinogens had also taken root. Narcotics were a natural extrapolation of the Liverpool Mafia's expertise in smuggling and trade-based crime. The usual and formidable barriers to entry that prevented most gangsters from getting into the drugs trade at the top end were leap-frogged with ease by the Liverpool villains.

They controlled a busy port, supported enviable international connections and had established a robust underworld banking system. The money-washing and cash-transfer network was smaller, but just as sophisticated as that which greased the wheels of the Italian Mafia ‘clip side of the big moist' in the US. A fortunate juxtaposition of such advantages allowed the Liverpool Mafia to steal a march in the drugs trade on their rivals in London, Manchester and Scotland.

Two other factors would later prove decisive in the exponential growth of the Mersey narco-phenomenon. The first was the historical and family links between the Liverpool villains and the ‘Bhoys' – the Dublin-based IRA. The Bhoys were warmly referred to by their Scouse allies as the ‘Ra' (pronounced ‘rar'). The second factor was the long-term development of a criminal distribution network.

Spanning the UK, this system had been in existence since the war and was more than used to handling everything from contraband to stolen goods in industrial quantities. This loose but unbreakable organisation of fences, middle-men, moneymen, drivers and couriers across the country was the envy of their land-locked rivals in other cities who traditionally feared to tread outside their ‘manors'. Gangsters in London were particularly reliant on the personal fiefdoms they controlled to provide income, more often than not the singular profit centres of their discreet, illegal empires.

Year after year the Liverpool Mafia's inter-city cash-and-carry networks were refined like a machine. In the '60s by stolen warehouse swag. In the '70s by pot. In the '80s by heroin and by the time the cocaine boom of the '90s came around, it was flooded with cheap Colombian powder like a ring main, taking drugs with unprecedented efficiency and profitability to all corners of the UK. The result – it made the bosses, the gatekeepers of this system, the richest criminals in British history. The side effect: an explosion of mainstream Class A abuse and an epidemic of crack cocaine.

Paul Grimes began to notice a power shift away from the traditional gangsters towards the drug dealers in the early '80s that corresponded with the ascent of Mrs Thatcher and the Toxteth riots of 1981. By 1985 it was an unstoppable sea change. The drug dealers were now the top dogs simply because they were making the most money, always the benchmark of success and influence in the Liverpool underworld.

As Paul surveyed the new criminal landscape, unnervingly he noticed that the big drug dealers were not necessarily new faces muscling in on the old guard's turf. They were the old guard. They were the villains whom he'd known all his life. The gangsters he'd robbed with, made money with, fought with, fought against, sheltered, ripped off, shot at, lent money to, shared cells with, got respect off and most importantly respected himself. These pioneers were embracing a goldrush, rushing forward into the international super-league of villainy and begging Paul to come with them.

Paul was hesitant. He was confused. He didn't know what to do. He noticed that the new drug dealers were quick to abandon the traditional underworld codes they had loosely lived by all of their criminal lives. Forging new alliances was the source of their power. Paul observed how the mainly white, middle-aged gangster elite was forming unprecedented links with the young, black drug dealers of Toxteth's Granby ghetto. As he weighed up the pros and cons of getting involved, he looked around him and was shocked to discover the huge number of close associates who were heavily involved with drugs.

Paul had known Tommy Comerford since the late '60s. He was an armed robber and safe-cracker cut from the same cloth as Billy Grimwood. It was not surprising that Tommy and Billy became partners on several huge robberies. The duo had masterminded the infamous Water Street Job in 1969, a commando-style heist on a Liverpool bank ripped straight from the pages of a Hollywood plot.

After tunnelling into the strong room for two days the gang made off with a whopping £140,000. Billy was never linked to the crime officially, but Comerford was later jailed for seven years. Following his release Billy helped Comerford invest in the nightclub scene. Paul had got to know Comerford better as they sat in meetings together, particularly when Johnny Nash was in town.

Paul was convinced Comerford was staunch – an anti-drugs gangster of the old school, who like Grimwood refused to deal heroin and cocaine. Even when Comerford was jailed for seven years for recruiting dockers in a cannabis-smuggling conspiracy, Paul refused to condemn him, arguing it was ‘only pot'. It came as a huge surprise when in 1983 Comerford was arrested with half a kilo of heroin at Heathrow airport and later jailed for 14 years for masterminding what Customs officers described as Britain's first Class A drugs cartel. Paul was disgusted. He felt betrayed.

Paul hated Tony Murray because he was part of the Ungi crew. He was the gangster shot under Haase's orders, and who later refused to give evidence in court. But Murray went up in Paul's esteem when in 1985 he declared war on the city's drug dealers. Murray publicly vowed to ‘wipe them off the face of the earth' after his 14-year-old nephew, Jason Fitzgibbons, died of a heroin overdose.

Jason's death triggered a national outcry. Even the then PM Margaret Thatcher commented: ‘Jason's death reminds us of the threat drug misuse poses to the well-being of all our young people, their families and society.'

Murray went further in a statement to the
Liverpool Echo
:

A few years later Murray was jailed for 12 years for plotting to supply £1 million worth of heroin. He was caught red-handed offering to sell one kilogram of heroin to undercover police officers and conspiring to offload a bulk load. Of all the Liverpool villains who abandoned their old-school principles in favour of drug dealing, Murray was the most symbolic.

The Showers brothers were unusual in the Liverpool underworld. In the '60s and '70s, they were one of the very few black families to break into the heavyweight league. Paul had charted the rise of Michael Showers from barman to Lime Street doorman to racketeer. He was evil, violent and feared.

One evening Showers caught Paul with his on/off girlfriend Pauline Dunne when he popped into her flat unannounced. Paul was sitting on the couch in his boxer shorts, Dunne was half naked. They had just finished having sex.

PAUL: Pauline wasn't nice looking, but just a good shag. Michael used to go abroad and send her bags of marijuana. This was in the early '70s. He came upstairs and I was sitting there. He knew the script. He knew I'd been giving her one. He said something about stepping on people's toes and that. I just said to him: ‘I'm staying here.' That's that, knowmean?

So he just sat down, a bit chocca about it all. In all fairness, he accepted his plight with dignity. We ended up having a natter and a coffee and that, in her pad. Then he got off. He knew what I could do. That's why we got on. That's why we could do business.

Between 1977 and 1979 Michael's brother Delroy upped the scale of the cannabis-importing business. The muscle-bound teetotaller flew to Kenya on a false passport and bribed corrupt officials to smuggle suitcases of cannabis on ships bound for Liverpool. Though disapproving, Paul did not cut his ties with the Showers because he argued that the drug was cannabis and not heroin or cocaine. Paul was also mindful of ‘stepping on toes' because of Delroy's close links with south London mobster Charlie Richardson, who was in turn connected to Johnny Nash.

In 1980 Delroy was jailed for nine years for being ‘the ringleader' of the smuggling operation. Meanwhile, Michael was carving out a political career as a self-styled spokesman for the riot-torn Toxteth ghetto. Astonishingly, he was given a £16,000-a-year job by Liverpool City Council and appeared on BBC's
Question Time
and
Panorama
. Of course, he was still racketeering at a rate of knots, but Paul respected his efforts to establish himself as an old-school ‘community leader'.

It came as a great shock when Michael was jailed for 20 years for smuggling 12 kilos of heroin into Britain from Afghanistan.

The Banker is one of Britain's biggest drug barons, but cannot be named for legal reasons because he has never been caught. The Banker was so secretive about his cannabis, heroin and cocaine smuggling that Paul and Billy Grimwood did not know that he had dirtied his hands. To Paul and Billy, The Banker was just another successful warehouse raider and hijacker. Billy had known him since he was a corrupt docker who made enough money to invest in a string of small businesses.

PAUL: I never liked him, but he did jobs with Billy. They'd do warehouses and armed robberies together. The Banker was also a doorman on the She club, which was Billy's favourite hangout. One time him and Billy went on the missing list after doing a robbery. The Banker had left his van outside Billy Grimwood's. So I robbed it. I was only about 18. The Banker gave a statement against me and I ended up getting six months in jail. I wasn't arsed about that, but I was when I found out he went on to become one of the richest drug dealers in Britain. It knocked me for six. I thought he was a stand-up guy who wouldn't touch the junk.

As Paul looked around him he realised dozens of his lifelong associates had sold out to drugs.

PAUL: They'd all started to get into it. Even my partners. Even Johnny One Eye. Could not believe it, la, when he started flying it in direct from the Dam without a care in the world.

He kept his scheme a secret from me because he knew how I felt about drugs. Would've pure smashed his blocko off if I'd've known. Eventually he was jailed for ten years for organising a parcel worth £135,000 which came into Liverpool and Harwich. It was like a kick in the teeth for me, to be fair, when I found out one of my own was dabbling.

Then there was Glyn Inkerman. He asked me to take over his scrapyard in Wavertree so he could concentrate on running a car-ringing scam in a hidden shed at the back. Fair enough and that. Goes without saying that I was robbing them blind of £500 a week on top of what I was charging them legit to manage their business. But later Glyn got nicked for dealing in the heavy stuff. Again, I was gobsmacked.

Another mate called Charlie swore blind to me that he wasn't doing the nasty, but later I found out that burglars had screwed his flat and took a telly with two ki's of yayo [cocaine] hidden in the back. That's where he used to hide his stash, in the back of his Trinitron. But he never banked on a couple of smackheads screwing his flat and having the telly off. They probably sold it for £50 not knowing there was 60 grand's worth of tackle in the back of it. Charlie came to me because he wanted someone to find those responsible and get it back. No way.