59 Minutes (9 page)

Half an hour later a car turned up outside the office
and one of the boss’s bears hustled me into the back seat. We headed north to a
small hotel in the
village
of
Pangbourne
on
Thames
. I was shown to a room at the back of the hotel and
told to wait.

Ten minutes rolled by before the boss walked in.

With two bears in tow, he walked up to me and,
knuckleduster in hand, cracked open my chin. I went down like a lump of clay
and the bears played football with me for five minutes.

‘Stop,’ came the boss’s voice.

The football stopped and I was dragged back onto a
chair.

‘Giles is out. You are in. The whole of
London
is
yours but pull another trick like that without my permission and you’ll join
Karl Marx up at
Highgate
Cemetery
.’

With this he left and, with three busted ribs, a
snapped wrist and a busted jaw I took a taxi back to
London
-
stopping off at Gerry the Fix’s gaff for some emergency medical repairs.

How’s the clock?
Eleven
thirty nine
and four seconds.

So there I was kingpin in
London
. Top of
the tree and not yet thirty. I took to the new job with a ruthless streak that
earned me the nickname ‘the bastard’. Unoriginal but accurate.

I was now earning more in a week than some of my old
school friends would earn in a year. I kept Spencer as my number two, split
London
into
five areas – north, south, east, west and the city - and put a body in place
for each. I drove the organisation hard and turned it from an opportunistic,
street-fighting mob into a sophisticated business. We embraced technology and
the financial markets and turned from petty loan sharking to money, drugs and
sex.

I lost four of my best men in early 1991 to a hit and
run by a gang who came up from the south west with ambitions to knock me over.
We repaid the favour by wiping out the entire gang. Most people will have heard
of it. We crashed a turboprop with thirty people on board as it took off from
Bristol
airport. Sabotage was suspected but never proven.

In the summer of
1993 a
money laundering scheme
that had doubled our income in the previous six months went tits up in a bad
way. The financial authorities sent in the heavy mob and they were the Andrews
Liver Salts to our digestion. I lost six of my best men to Wormwood Scrubs for
sentences ranging from three to eight years. I escaped by the skin of my teeth
but my card was marked.

By now the police were wise to us in a big way but I
was careful to give them little reason to talk to me.
London
was now
over three quarters of the total income of the group and I was pushing to take
control of the rest of
England
. I reckoned we could triple our income if I had the
steering wheel.

Of course you can see what’s coming. Sadly so could
the boss. I was no longer a valued asset. I was becoming a serious risk to his
command.

One sunny Tuesday a blue Ford Escort parked outside my
townhouse in
Chelsea
at five in the morning and, as I left the front door
two hours later, it exploded - taking out half a block of
London
’s most
expensive real estate.

I should have died but, as I left the house, I bent
down to tie a shoe lace. The initial blast wave caught me in the backside and
threw me into the basement well that sat beneath my front door. Out of the way
of the main explosion I survived but was rendered deaf in one ear and suffered
second degree burns to a fifth of my body. I had more cuts and bruises than
could be counted and my Rolex was branded into my wrist. To this day I still
carry the imprint of a watch on my skin.

I spent three months in hospital, all the time fearing
that the boss would finish the job. But he had gotten sloppy in his old age and
word was everywhere that he was behind the failed attempt on my life. He went
to ground. I might have been known as ‘the bastard’ but at least I was a fair
bastard and rule number one in our game is don’t shit on your own doorstep.

Two days before I left hospital a young man called
Greg McAllister took a walk in
Hyde Park
with his pet
Labrador
. It was a routine he had been repeating for a
fortnight and, as he had done for the previous fourteen mornings, he uttered a
polite good morning to an old man in a jogging suit flanked by two human four
by twos. Only this time he took a small pistol from his coat and emptied the
gun into the old man before running off.

I was now in charge of the
UK
and had no
intention of stopping there.

Sometime after I left hospital I was given a copy of
Little Caesar starring Edward G Robinson to watch while I was laid up. Robinson
plays Riko, probably one of the best known gangsters in movie history. I loved
the movie. No – I adored the movie. Robinson became a bit of a role model. He
took no shit.

There is a scene where he suspects that one of his
gang is feeling guilty and about to go to confess all to the priest. Riko’s
solution was to gun the gang member down on the steps of the church. I must
have watched that movie a hundred times and I made it clear that I no longer
wanted to be known as the bastard or Jock - and soon I was the new Riko.

People thought I was off my head but I loved it.

I had just entered my fourth decade and was one of the
main players in my game. Life was sweet and I set about making myself
comfortable. I called Martin down from
Glasgow
and put him and Spencer on the day to day stuff.

I thought Martin might object. After all he had
happily grown roots in
Glasgow
and, apart from the odd phone call, he had been a
stranger. He surprised me by jumping on a train and joining me.

I muscled up with bodyguards that were smart enough to
know how to defend me and thick enough to do it regardless of the danger to themselves.
I bought a pile in the country and adopted the landed gentry motif with
consummate ease. Shotguns, wellies, hounds and a Land Rover Defender - I was
lord of the manor – in true Only Fools and Horses style. I probably looked like
a tit but I didn’t care - the money was rolling in and I was well smart enough
to keep things on an even keel. At least I thought I was.

Eleven forty eight and twenty seven seconds
– time flies when you’re telling a good story.

For five years I made hay and rolled in the folding
stuff for fun. I had the sense to stay out of
Ireland
but
Wales
and
Scotland
were
mine. The north east of
England
held out for a while but a face to face (by face to
face I mean fifty odd on each side) in
South
Shields
and we sorted it out.

I know I wasn’t the only criminal in the country. I
was one of thousands but I was nearer the top of the tree than rolling in the
manure at the base of the trunk.

A year later Carl Dupree rolled up at my manor. He
stood on my lawn, took out a spray can and wrote in six feet letters, bright
red six feet letters:
:
‘The End.’

That’s when things got weird and I mean plenty weird.

The sun rose on the red lettering on my lawn as three
gardeners cut out the turf and replaced it with less offensive grass. Dupree
had done a runner of extraordinary speed and grace. I didn’t know his name that
day but I vowed to find out double quick. I ordered Martin and Spencer to the
mansion and told them they had twenty four hours to find the man on the lawn
and bring him to me.

They left, heads held high - the way they walked
boosting my sense of well being. I would have the bastard in front of me in
less than a day.

Three days rolled by and my blood pressure rose by the
hour. I ranted and I raved. I screamed and I threatened. I blew a fuse, put in
a new one and blew it again. All to no avail. Dupree had gone to ground and no
one seemed to know who he was or where he had fled.

The lack of progress was starting to hurt. I had been dissed
in my own home and I seemed powerless to act. That sort of story can gather
legs and kick you in the nuts. I put thirty grand on the man’s head and let it
be known that whoever brought him in would also get a boot up the promotion
tree.

A week later and I had attained an altogether new
level of apoplexy. All other matters were thrown to the wind as I upped the
ante to fifty grand and a brand new five series Beemer.

Both Martin and Spencer told me to drop it but that just
made me more determined to track the painter down. I set about it with a
vengeance pulling in favours that should have been left owing. I dedicated 24/7
to the hunt and left Martin and Spencer to run the business.

A month later I woke up to find the red lettering was
back only this time it was more specific.

‘The End. One week.’

I checked the CCTV cameras that had been installed but
all I got was a grainy black and white picture of someone on the lawn at three
in the morning. I had the fit to end all fits and threw everything I had at
tracking the painter down.

A week sped away and seven days later I was sitting in
the office when I heard a commotion down stairs. I stood up, just in time to
greet an industrial quantity of police officers as they flooded into the room.

I was handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police
car and taken to Paddington Green police station. It wasn’t the first time this
had happened but it was the most heavy-handed. I asked for my lawyer as soon as
I could and was left in a holding cell until he arrived. I told him to get me
out and he duly vanished to do my bidding. When, after an hour, he hadn’t
returned I hammered on the cell door demanding to see him again.

Twenty more minutes of sitting in the cell and he
reappeared - the look on his face was not positive.

I can still remember his opening words in glorious
Technicolor:

‘Someone has dropped you in it. I mean SERIOUSLY
dropped you in it.’

Sixteen months later I was sentenced to twenty years.
The charges were as deep and wide as the
Clyde
. The last five years of my life were paraded in front
of the court like an open book. Accounts, photographs, witness statements,
copies of correspondence – you name it - it was thrown at me. It was as if
someone had recorded my every thought and gesture over the last five years.

My lawyer told me that only someone on the inside
could have done this. I thanked him for that particular pearl of wisdom with a
smack round the head. I had figured that out ten minutes after they started the
questioning.

When Martin took the witness box, under immunity from
prosecution, I stood up in the court and told him he was dead. The judge held
me in contempt but I was going down big style and didn’t give a fuck.

Martin poured out damning evidence like a fresh torrent
and by the time he finished I was so screwed my lawyer told me to try and cut a
deal. I refused. It would have meant grassing up on my colleagues and even
under threat of a life sentence I wasn’t going to roll on people.

I entered prison on the fourth of November nineteen
ninety three. I served fourteen years across five prisons and was released one
year and three days ago.

By then I had lost everything. Dupree - I had by now
discovered his name - moved into the patch and Martin and Spencer vanished. Some
of my colleagues stayed on but most left or met messy ends.

I had only one visitor in fourteen years.

It was two years from the end of my stretch. With no
one returning calls, no one visiting or no one answering letters, I had been well
and truly cut off years ago.

My status in the prison was worth shit and I had
received a regular stream of kickings – mainly from people I had crapped on as
I had risen up the scum pond. You would think that it would have stopped as the
years rolled by but there was always someone new that recognised me and took
delight in reminding me of what I had done to them.

Visiting time had long since stopped being a hope and,
with freedom on the horizon, I should have been in a better place but I was so
depressed that I was almost revelling in my pain. When the guard told me I had
a visitor I laughed at him. I hadn’t had a visitor since day one. When Rachel
Score walked into the visiting room I laughed again. I could fathom no reason
for the visit.

She sat opposite me in a dress that was three sizes
too small with five-inch stilettos that she struggled to walk in. Her face was
a cake of make up and her hair a badly cropped mush. I could still see what
Martin saw in her, but only just.