Powder Wars (16 page)

The list goes on – Leslie Shields, Brian Barrett – all what you would normally call, at a push, ordinary decent criminals who got mixed up with the gear.

The city's underworld was soon split in two. The drug dealers and those that were against drugs and didn't believe in it. They had kids, like me, who were growing up and all that and they didn't want the likes of that shit on the streets. They were terrified in case their kids got involved with drugs. It was all over the papers – ‘Generation in Peril' and all that.

It was purely down to morals. The drug dealers said that our distatse was down to jealousy, but we were making plenty of money so that didn't come into it. My main motivation was that these scumbags were killing people. They were making lots of dough, but they were killing innocent people as well. End of. For the first time in my life I was actually facing up to the fact that there were victims of crime. Wrecked my head it did, for a while, in fairness.

A lot of the big villains who I knew were anti-drugs also looked down on drug dealers as something that the blacks done. They were in pure denial, but they were very shocked when it turned out that it was whites what was doing it as well and what's more, it was their own – their families, mates, partners, brothers, sons. They all had blood on their hands.

I didn't go totally fucking crusader about it either. Was not Roland off've
Grange Hill
and that, dancing about with a T-shirt on and that. Was a realist at the end of the day. After all, I had a draw myself – regularly. Having a smoke and winding down to a bit of
Dark Side of
now and again was my way of getting through the day in an oft high-pressure environment. But for me, there was a big difference between cannabis and Class As. Know it's a bit thingy, but it's true, la.

I wasn't arsed about the little dealers knocking out a bit of speed to their mates. The difference between them and this new crowd was the sheer
scale
, know where I'm going? This new lot just wanted to get
everyone
bang into it on a fucking industrial scale. I watched them. One minute you had a nice auld neighbourhood somewhere where everyone knew each other and that. The next minute it was
Escape From New York
'cos these cunts had flooded the place with brown. Everyone running about screwing each other's houses to get money together for a £5 bag. All kinds of bits of birds on the game and that.

These new gangsters would have been made up if everywhere was reduced to smoking ruins, so they could run amok selling their pollo [cocaine] unhindered.

A lot of the big gangsters who were anti-drugs just started keeping quiet about it, not wanting to ruffle any feathers. They never had the bottle to tell the dealers that they didn't like what they were doing. Some of us even had a meeting. They were that fucking worried about the dealers finding out it was in total secret and they whispered their concerns like old women. I said that I was prepared to make a stand. To shoot some of these cunts if necessary. But they just ummed and arrhhed and said: ‘We admire your stance and that but . . .' And they didn't know where to look.

These were big names. Hard hitters who had killed and maimed in pursuit of wealth with their own hands, but they were behaving like pathetic kids who purely did not know what to do. They gave up the fight before it even started. After that, drugs just became acceptable.

Paul was disgusted. In a life-changing decision, he then decided to plan his escape from a life of crime. Financially he could afford to abandon the thieving and the clubs. For a 35-year-old villain he was in an enviable position, even though he was torn between two lives. Several new acquisitions had been added to a web of legitimate business interests: a stone-cleaning company, a second scrapyard, a car-breaking business and a skip-hire firm.

Paul had invested his illegal earnings well. Each of his enterprises was generating healthy profits, especially his new metals business in Greenland Road, Dingle, under the watchful eye of his wife Chrissy. Realistically, Paul knew he could live more than comfortably for the rest of his life on what they made. In addition, there was a stack of cash stashed away for a rainy day. Only Paul knew where it was.

Following their divorce, his ex-wife estimated the hoard to be several hundred thousand pounds. Underworld sources swore blind he was sitting on several million plus. Only Paul knew.

PAUL: One day I just woke up and decided to stop being a gangster. It seemed that everything and everyone around me was being tainted by drugs and I wanted no part of it. So I stopped everything – the robbing, the warehouses, the doors, the protection. Walked away. All of it got binned in one fell swoop. I just started going into my office in my yard and being a businessman. Cut all ties. Of course, I still dabbled. I got a lot of fiddles up and running so I didn't have to totally rely on the generosity of the free market.

I immediately boxed off a load of lads who worked for the GPO who laid the cables for the phones and that. They also used to pick up the big old cables out of the ground. So much would go back to the GPO, so much would be weighed into me. The cables were solid copper with like a thick lead sleeve. Melted down they were worth a small fortune. So I had a big furnace built especially which would melt the lead off leaving the wire. I made between £250 and £500 a week off that. It was a good screw. Chrissy, my wife, was getting good punt out of it and it went on for years.

Then I had a deal with these lads who worked in Fords [Ford car company] at Halewood. Every week they stole and smuggled these big blocks of copper, tonnes and tonnes of it, out of the factory. It made me a lot of dough. Then I started crushing cars for people who wanted to get the insurance. I used to do it for a gang who specialised in insurance fraud, so they put all their work my way. The cars were always Mercs or Rolls, mostly new, owned by businessmen who were having problems. It was a good earner.

I was making money legit, but not legit, if you know what I mean, but compared to robbing warehouses it felt like I was helping old ladies across the road. I even started doing charity work. Sponsoring people to jump out of aeroplanes and that. Mind you, I still had all the lads coming in to try to tempt me back into getting up to no good, but it was just drugs, drugs, drugs with them.

One day John Haase came in with Bernie Aldridge. They had 20 kilos of cannabis. They were desperately trying to break into the drugs market for the first time. Haase didn't even know how to sell it so he thought with my connections I'd be able to get a buyer. They'd already squeezed all the oil out of it. They offered me a £1,000-a-kilo commission. I told them I wasn't interested, but they even left behind a kilo sample to try to tempt me. I looked at it. Even though it was crap stuff I knew I could have sold it with one phone call, but there was simply no question, 20K or not.

My stone-cleaning business went through the roof. I couldn't keep up with demand. I even bought a portable phone. I was one of the very first people to have one. I had to go to Manchester to buy it. It was a car phone but I could take it out of the Jag and carry it around with me.

One day I gets a call from the young lad who worked for me in the yard. Tells me a feller had been in demanding dough otherwise he'd burn the scrapyard down. A protection racket. Could you believe that shit? I had to laugh at the irony of it. Asking me of all people to
pay
protection and that. Clearly this clown had not done his homework and had no idea who owned this real estate.

He was only a kid, 20 or so. A half-caste lad from Toxteth, which was only down the road. Liked his style and that but I really had no time for this type of messing so I just told the lad to tell him there was no money and to fuck off, hoping that he would just do one so I could get on with my business and that. So the lad gets off the phone and goes and tells this young scally that he's getting fuck all. Give him his due the scallywag will not take no for an answer. Says he'll be back at four o'clock to collect dough or else. ‘Or else,' if you will! So I tells the lad not to worry and that. I jumps in the Jag and bombs back to the yard. I hid in one of the back offices and waits for the ‘heavies' to come back.

Dead on four this young lad moseys into the office. My lad tells him that there's no money forthcoming. The scally says that's too bad and that. At that point I emerge from the shadows. The lad flinches, but in fairness he stood his ground.

‘I want money for the yard. Otherwise it will come ontop for you.'

‘You're getting fuck all here, mate,' I replies. ‘The only protection in this yard is from me. I am the dog.'

‘Put it this way,' the impudent rapscallion says, ‘your yard will not be here tomorrow. That is a fact.'

‘Won't it now?' I says.

I grabbed hold of him round the neck, punched fuck out of him, kicked fuck out of him and bounced him all round the yard until he lost consciousness with pain. Then I dragged him up to the main gate and dumped him in the street outside. Totally done in. I told the lad to call an ambulance for him. He went to hospital. I later found out that the lad was a bag-snatcher who was just trying his hand at being a gangster. Is right and that but not with my good self. His name was Curtis Warren. Later he would go on to be the biggest gangster this country had ever bred in 2,000 years of criminal history.

As I watched the ambulance men peel him off've the floor I had a funny feeling that our paths would cross again. I was not wrong. I also noticed in the corner of my eye that there was a surveillance car parked across the road. Two fellers who looked like busies sat off next to an ice cream van. ‘I wonder who that might be?' I asked my good self.

11

The Informant

In 1990 Paul Grimes' personal crusade against Liverpool's drug barons took on an unfathomable and dangerous twist. He turned informant. It was the bravest and unlikeliest decision of his life. Cooperating with the law went against everything Paul believed in. His straight-going stretch of late had done little to temper his deeply rooted hatred of the police and all they stood for.

For the last 25 years he had waged unrelenting and uncompromising total war against the authorities he believed were out to stop him from making a living as a career criminal. When he got pinched, he conducted himself like a prisoner of war. Like the majority of old-school hoods, he said nothing, not even his name, or fed them such a blizzard of unhelpful bullshit guaranteed to secure a lengthy sentence whether guilty or not. Ratting on even the most despised crooks was frowned upon. Grimes had never cooperated with the police in any shape or form. He lived by the old code. Omerta, no back answers. The police and their agents were his sworn enemies. On the many occasions he was offered the chance to bribe a bent copper to drop a case, Paul had always steadfastly refused; he couldn't live with the thought of police officers, corrupt or otherwise, spending his money.

Of course, there had been the Fisherman and the odd ‘dropsy' to the local bobby to look the other way or straighten out a particularly unhelpful witness, but that was par for the course, especially in the nightclub game. Paul had always religiously steered clear of the systematic corruption of senior police officers, which other villains had used to stay ahead of the game. For him, having a copper on the books was akin to grassing. He believed the exchange of information always ended up being two-way. So when on a summer's day in 1990 Paul picked up the phone to begin ‘grassing' on the villains he had known all his life it was a momentous act. The motivation behind it was simple – his family.

Jason Grimes had always held a special place in his father's heart. He was, after all, Paul's first-born son. But more than that, Paul had always seen in him the potential to make something of his life in a way that he could not have. Jason was honest, clever and hardworking and had no intention of following his father's footsteps into a life of crime. He was a happy, stable child who never brought trouble to his father's doorstep. At school he excelled academically and was popular with both pupils and teachers. Jason loved sport and won an amateur schoolboy championship in his teens. He rose at six o'clock in the morning, six days a week, hail, rain or snow to earn pocket-money on a two-hour milk round before getting ready for school.

In short, Jason was a dream son who Paul and his mother Christine were very proud of. Of course, like most teenagers there were times when Jason went off the rails. At 14, Paul caught him smoking cannabis in his bedroom. He gave him such an earful that he hoped it was enough to steer him away from further excursions into the twilight world of drug abuse.

Paul had high hopes for Jason. He encouraged him to join the Royal Navy and was delighted when his brother-in-law, an ex-sailor, took him on regular visits to Plymouth to see the fleet. At 17, Jason signed up and passed out with flying colours. To celebrate, Paul bought him his first car, a Ford Escort, wrapped it in ribbons and presented it to him at the gates of the naval base in Plymouth. When Jason hinted that he would have preferred a four-by-four, Paul had a Suzuki Jeep delivered two weeks later. Nothing was too much for his beloved son.

One year later Jason was a registered heroin addict who was being hunted by the police across Britain for a string of habit-feeding ram raids, wage snatches and shoplifting sprees. The 19-year-old junkie had dropped out of the navy and was shacked up in a bed-sit with a heroin-using former girlfriend.

PAUL: I was crushed. Nothing had ever sledge-hammered me so hard. I felt dead. I just used to sit there for hours staring into space thinking: ‘Where did it all go wrong? What has happened to my son?'

When he dropped out of the navy, no one could believe it. We even went to see his commanding officer who said he was the best in his class, but he could offer us no explanation. When I found out he was using the other gear, it was like being told I had cancer. Part of me died. But another side of me welled with anger. I could not believe that my own flesh and blood had got mixed up with drugs, something which I had always fought. It was ironic to the point of cruelty. I blamed myself. This was payback for my sins, for sure. Crime karma come back to haunt me. I had inflicted loss and pain on society all of my life and now this was society getting paid in return. That's how it got me thinking. Head was wrecked with it all, telling you, la.