The Devil (23 page)

Skateboard was of mixed race, about four or five years older than me and had been an international drug dealer all his life. I'd got to know him when I had sorted out a problem for him using the ancient art of serious violence. He was a rich kinda guy – we're talking millions – with a lovely big house in an exclusive part of the country. However, like all shrewd operators, he wanted to share the risk on any new venture.

The deal was this: I would put up all the money while he'd do the work and provide all the technical know-how. He asked for a £100,000 capital investment up front to set up an industrial-scale super farm in a disused aircraft hangar in Holland. He promised it would churn out a bumper crop every ten weeks. State-of-the-art technology would ensure that the harvest was of high purity and production-line quality.

Some of the other board members were wary about us putting so much money in while Skateboard contributed nothing. Nonetheless, I am a lot more business-minded than most villains, and I was of the opinion that it was like any new development in production – usually built with someone else's money. I could see Skateboard's rationale. If the worst came to the worst, it wouldn't be him making the loss. I wasn't doing the work, but I was taking the financial risk, the way banks do. I was prepared to do that if the project materialised and I got 50 per cent of the profit plus my investment back. To me, it was just a few mobile-phone calls made from the comfort of my bed.

The extra beauty about the proposal was that it was perfectly legal to grow skunk in Holland. There were low operational costs, as all the Dutch electricity would be fiddled by a pair of Scousers over there, and all the nutrients were being shipped in from the Third World for buttons. The labour was provided by sweatshop-cheap Eastern Europeans. To grow it cost us fuck all, but a kilo would wholesale at three grand over here – £100 to £150 an ounce at retail. Good money for weed.

We got the operation up and running and flooded the country with skunk. Within a year, my return had reached half a million quid. However, profits soon began to diminish – not because of the bad press surrounding skunk in the UK but because Skateboard had begun to slack off.

When a business matures, it often needs a troubleshooter to tweak it and put it gently back on track. The only problem is that I'm no Sir John Harvey-Jones. When it comes to motivating managers, my problem-solving repertoire doesn't extend much further than my old friends – kidnap, torture and blood-freezing violence.

I used my intelligence network and found out the reason why Skateboard had been neglecting my interests. Apparently, he had been investing some of the capex I'd put up into a new Class A venture, which was giving him an even better return, so I asked him for my £100,000 back. He started to splutter and stammer, and um and ah, and I soon realised he didn't have it. However, I didn't show him my displeasure or concern. My poker face concealed all that from him. Instead, I started hatching a plot to get my money back.

Not long afterwards, I got talking to him about his new cocaine venture. He told me a shipment had just come in. I said, ‘I'll buy five kis off you for £125,000.' Then we shook on it. At the next meeting, I brought my new right-hand man Wallace on board and told him he could have anything we taxed over and above the value of my initial investment – £100,000.

Skateboard bounced into my office to collect his money. Instead, I tied him to a chair and whispered in his ear, ‘I've asked you for my 100 grand, and you haven't given it to me. You're going to call your runner now to get the money.'

He said, ‘I can't be doing with that.' Slap. I gave him a heavy-handed wallop on his face. This cut his mouth, and he started to bleed.

I said, ‘Look, you think you can use my fucking money and do something else with it. If you had given back my money when I asked you, you wouldn't be having this problem. You better fucking make the call now.'

Anyway, he made the call and a young white kid came down with the cash. As far as I was concerned, I was in the right and a line had now been drawn under the matter.

The next morning, I heard a banging on my front door. I looked out the window and saw two South American brothers called Julio and Hector. Julio was the elder brother, the brains, and Hector was a street fighter who thought he could fight anybody.

Dionne was at work, so I opened the door in my dressing gown. ‘Come in, gentlemen,' I said.

Immediately, they got down to business: ‘That cocaine you took off Skateboard is ours. That's our five kis, and we want it fucking back. We know what you've done. You've set him up. You've been feeding him money for weeks and weeks, and then, all of a sudden, you've just snatched all the gear off him.'

‘Is that what he told you?' I asked them as I slowly walked towards Julio. He jumped back at every step I took, watching me like a hawk. ‘Look, Julio,' I said. ‘If I'm going to hit, I will declare it. I'll say, “Defend yourself now, because it's on.” So you don't have to worry about me going to steal it on you or sneaking up to hit you, because that's not my intention.' I scratched my bollocks. I could see that Hector wanted to attack me, but I reckon he was overawed by my reputation.

I then said, ‘If you'd have knocked on my door and said, “Excuse me, Stephen, can we have a word?” and told me that this was your coke and what Skateboard had done, I might have considered giving it back to you.' Obviously, I wouldn't have done this – it was just a line I was using. ‘Instead you've accused me of feeding Skateboard for weeks so that I can rob him of 100 grand. How disrespectful is that? You haven't asked me my side of the story. You've just decided that I taxed him. So get the fuck out of my house. You're getting fuck all back.'

I went into my kitchen drawer, pulled out my biggest knife and chased them like a pair of naughty schoolboys. ‘You've been banging on my door like you're fucking somebody. Get the fuck out.' However, I knew that Hector would hold a grudge over this and that I'd have to watch him, as he might try to test me in the future.

I was back in bed when the doorbell went again. This time, there was a female at the door. It turned out to be Skateboard's missus. She pleaded poverty, saying that her husband had been foolish, losing all their money, and the 100 grand I had taken was his last bit of dough.

I could see that Skateboard had spun her a line, so I told her that her husband deserved it. As far as I was concerned, that was the end of the matter. However, not long after, I received a call out of the blue from Mick the Scorpion. He said, ‘You're never going to believe what I've been asked to do to you. You're going to laugh your head off. I've got something for you.'

We met at Café 53 in Bold Street. As soon as I sat down, he gave me 15 grand in cash and a Toc (Tokarev) automatic – an eastern European, 13-shot, 9-mm automatic handgun. He said, ‘I've been given those two things to kill you. This is the gun, and the cash is the down payment for a contract killing. And when you're dead, I get another 15 grand. The job's worth 30 grand altogether.'

‘Who's put the contract out?' I asked.

‘Skateboard and the Colombians,' he replied.

The Scorpion had never forgotten that I'd gone back for him that time after the bungled tax job. He told me that he had always been indebted to me for not leaving him there to be slaughtered by the animals. He said, ‘I always remember what you said to me, Stephen: “You think I would leave you lying there when there's room on my horse for two?” That was the kindest thing anyone has ever done for me, and I'm now about to repay you.'

He pulled out a Polaroid camera. I asked him what it was for, and he said, ‘To go with this.' He put a tube of lipstick on the table. I looked at him and thought, ‘A Polaroid camera and a woman's lipstick?' I'm a pretty sharp geezer, but I still hadn't twigged.

Mick grinned: ‘We're going to fake your death, get the other 15 grand and reap sweet revenge on the man who wants you dead.'

I thought, ‘What a good fucking idea.'

We went off to a derelict house on the outskirts of Liverpool. Mick told me to roll myself in the dust to make it look like I'd been roughed up. Then, using the lipstick, he put a heavy dot on my head – to resemble a bullet entry wound – and a little trail of ‘blood' on my face. Both of us had been in these situations plenty of times, so we knew exactly what a Tokarev bullet to the head looked like. We also knew about the finer details of the consequences of a kidnap, torture and shooting – bodily fluids leaking onto the floor, sweat, dirt and grime, and scuffed up hair and clothes.

Remember those fake pictures in the
Daily Mirror
of the Iraqis being tortured by British soldiers? As soon as I saw them, I knew that they were fake – mainly because there was no dirt or sweat on the hooded man. Those pictures would never have got past even the most basic of underworld checks. If only Piers Morgan had been a gangster, he would have known. So, I arranged myself into a pose I had seen in a picture of a man I once knew who had been shot. From memory, I copied the way his mouth had hung open with his teeth kind of exposed – rat-like. Then Mick took the picture.

About a week later, the Scorpion went to see Skateboard to tell him that the job was done and to collect the balance of 15 grand left on the contract. Being a shrewd businessman, Skateboard said, ‘Where's the proof? I haven't read about it in the papers.' Reading about something in the papers is like a receipt or an invoice in the underworld, and it's often used as evidence that someone has carried out a task. It's the same thinking behind the yellow pedal.

Mick had thought it all through. ‘Because I buried him under the floorboards of an out-of-the-way house and nobody's found his body yet,' he replied. During the previous week, when I was supposed to be dead, I had made sure I'd stayed incognito and wasn't seen out clubbing or anything like that.

The Scorpion continued, ‘But I took the precaution of taking a Polaroid picture for you, so you can see for yourself. I know you'll be happy to see it. I wanted to show you it before I destroyed it. Then I want you to pay me my fucking money.'

As he was looking at the picture, a smile appeared across the soft cunt's face. He'd actually gone for it, believing I was a dead man. ‘Nice one,' he said. ‘I'll meet you in the Greek restaurant tomorrow night, to collect the 15 grand.'

The following day, I told the Scorpion, ‘Make sure you get him in the restaurant sitting with his back to the door, so he can't see who's coming in.'

That night, the Scorpion arrived at the Greek on Borough Road in Birkenhead. I waited outside, watching the proceedings through the restaurant window. Sure enough, Skateboard handed over the 15 grand. Then, over a kebab and a haloumi salad, they started to celebrate the demise of the Devil.

As soon as the handover took place, I quietly slipped into the restaurant. I could see that the Scorpion had spotted me out of the corner of his eye. He was a great actor. If he'd gone to Hollywood, he would've got an Oscar. He didn't flinch and Skateboard didn't notice a thing, as he was facing the other direction as planned. He was laughing and joking about how he was going to be the king of the underworld for having toppled the Devil.

I walked up to his right-hand side and just stood there. There was a mirror on the wall, and when he looked up he saw me dressed in black and wearing silver shades and my best Colgate smile. He jumped up like he'd seen a ghost.

‘We are each our own devil, and we make this world our hell,' I said, quoting a bit of Oscar Wilde that I'd picked up especially for the occasion. ‘So, Skateboard, you want me dead? Well, I'll take this 15 grand then.' I gave the money to the Rock Star, who I had brought with me for the laugh, and said, ‘And you now owe me another 25 grand as a fine for trying to have me killed.'

The Rock Star said, ‘Is that it? Aren't you going to do nothing to him?'

I replied, ‘No. He's a waste of time. A joke. A waste of space.' I turned to Skateboard, ‘If you carry on messing about in the real underworld, you're going to get killed, your brother's going to get killed, your wife's going to get killed and your daughter's going to get killed. You don't belong in this world. You've been fined 25 grand. Pay the money and I'll forget all about it.'

He then said to me, ‘Stephen, Stephen, I haven't got that money.'

‘You can pay it in instalments,' I replied. ‘Pay me any way you want. But you'll have to pay the lot.'

Two weeks later, Skateboard had paid the amount in full. All in all, I'd made about 40 grand out of my own death. Talk about turning a negative into a positive. Is that not fucking super or what? What business guru or motivational speaker could teach you to pull one like that out of the hat? I'm a master at it.

If someone screws me over, I will let them go free if they pay me the fines. Like in the judicial system, you've atoned for your crime. I'm not going to make you pay a fine and then fucking punish you. I'm not going to fuck you twice for one crime. That's just not fair, is it?

To this day, Skateboard is still selling skunk and doing his little bits of bobbing and weaving around. I saw him the other week at the traffic lights, and he pretended not to see me. I could tell he was terrified – he just tried to keep looking straight ahead, the way you do when you're too embarrassed to make eye contact. However, as we pulled off in our cars, I knew he wouldn't be able to resist a quick look in my direction – and I had prepared myself for this. When he glanced at me, all he could see was my head lolling to one side on the head rest, with my mouth hanging open and my teeth sticking out, like in the film
Goodfellas
– and just like in the Polaroid.