Hateland (28 page)

    Despite my 'new start', I needed a decent income, so I was prepared to accommodate a degree of lawlessness to suit my needs. A cynic might say that, with each of my 'new starts', I didn't become a better person as such, I merely found new outlets for my badness. I wouldn't agree entirely with such a cynical assessment, but, at the same time, I wouldn't squirt the cynical assessor with ammonia for saying it.

    Customers would arrange the job with Fatman. They never knew who I was or how to contact me. This protected me from being grassed up if the police became involved, as they sometimes did. If customers unwisely gave them Fatman's name, he'd say he'd sold the debt on. We did work all over the country - and even once in Switzerland.

    Our clients ranged from solicitors to drug dealers, with all sorts in between - market traders in Manchester, property developers in Bristol, Smithfield Meat Market people in London. On busy days, I'd have up to 20 jobs to do, and I did this work three to four days a week in addition to my nightclub shifts. Yet my main job remained my position as head of security at Raquels.

    By September 1993, I felt that to bolster my position I needed to form an alliance with a strong 'firm'. That was how I ended up going into a partnership that would have a profound effect on my life. The person I shook hands with was Tony Tucker, who ran a large and well-respected door firm. He used his control of security at clubs to give dealers, at a price, exclusive rights to sell drugs on the premises.

    Tucker started sending me men from south and east London. Sometimes, he'd need to find work for doormen whom the management at other clubs no longer wanted: perhaps they'd bashed someone half to death; maybe they'd forgotten to wear a bow tie. Other times, Tucker just liked to act as a one-man employment agency for bodybuilders. Nine times out of ten, I'd tell him to send them along. Then next day a Mr Universe would stick his head round the door and say, 'Bernie? Hi, my name's . . .'

    The first two men to come to see me this way were two East Enders, Ian and Greg. Both were black. Now three of my eight doormen were black. It was the first time in my life I'd been forced into such a close working relationship with black people. And at first I didn't feel that comfortable.

    Perhaps my years steeped in racism caused my discomfort. Or maybe three was a crowd. Perhaps, in the back of my mind, I feared they might try to take over. Whatever the reason, I remained wary of them for some time. I even bashed Ian once, because I thought he was laughing at me. But gradually I grew to like and trust them (as far as anyone trusts anyone in that world). In times of danger, they proved their reliability and loyalty.

    In late 1993, I got a call from a doorman who said his mate Gavin needed work. Apparently, Gavin had been sacked from a club in Ilford after sending a customer to hospital. The doorman said he'd already rung Tucker on Gavin's behalf, but had been told there was no work. This struck me as odd, because I'd already mentioned to Tucker that I needed an extra doorman. I suspected he had another reason for saying no. Doorman politics is worthy of academic study. The microcosm of the door is a catty little world built on bubbling jealousies, stifled resentments and long-borne grudges. People won't speak to each other for years for quite petty reasons. Perhaps someone sweated on their towel in the gym - or tipped over their nail varnish.

    Indeed, many bodybuilders are better manicured than Barbie. If you could calculate which groups spend the most on sunbeds, leg-waxing and hairdos, you'd find a toss-up between call girls, bodybuilders and bored housewives with rich husbands. I rang Tucker and asked him about employing Gavin. He said he didn't really like the guy, although he couldn't, or wouldn't, give a reason. In the end, he said, 'It's up to you, Bernie. If you need someone, then take him on.'

    I hated all that doorman politics. One week, someone was in favour, the next, he was a grass, a bottler or a wanker. I like to take people as I find them, not as other people describe them or as they're 'generally known'. So I rang my contact back and told him to send Gavin along.

    When I got out of my car outside Raquels that Friday evening, I noticed an Asian-looking bodybuilder locking up his car. I was always very vigilant when entering and leaving the club. I felt that was the point at which a doorman was most vulnerable to attack from people seeking revenge.

    The Asian man walked towards me and said, 'Are you Bernie?' I said I was. He stuck out his hand and said, 'All right, mate. I'm Gavin.' I thought, 'Fucking hell. A shopkeeper. He'll be annihilated.'

    Basildon's the sort of place where Asians travel round in ambulances, Maurice, Greg and Ian were regularly called 'black bastards' when they turned people away; I was called a 'northern bastard'. So it seemed safe to assume that an Asian doorman - a rare breed in any event - would take endless stick.

    During the evening, I asked Gavin why certain people seemed so set against his getting a bit of work. He explained that Tucker had once turned up at a club where he was working and hadn't wanted to queue, pay or show any sort of respect to the doormen. That would have been typical of Tucker. He'd walk to the front of the queue and, when asked for money, look at the doorstaff as if they were mad. Tucker had ended up being bashed. He'd lost a bit of face - an unforgivable outrage in the world of the door. As a result, he didn't want to give work to anyone who'd been part of the door firm that bashed him.

    Despite my initial reservations, I liked Gavin from that first conversation. Quiet and uncomplicated, he meant what he said and said what he meant. His catchphrase with leery customers became, 'What's your problem, mate?' Then he'd usually try reasoning with them. If they remained unreasonable, he had no hesitation in creating new customers for the NHS. He didn't care for reputations - and could certainly fight. Indeed, he turned out to be one of the best doormen I ever employed. In a short time, he became the man I relied on most when war broke out. And, perhaps most remarkably, away from Raquels he became my best friend.

    One evening, two skinheads with tattoos on their heads and necks came to a bar annexed to the club. They arrived with four non-skinhead friends. I could see them looking at Gavin, then making remarks and laughing. They started doing the same to me. One of them stood behind me, aping me. I turned round and grabbed him by the throat, pushing him backwards as I did so. He fell back and hit his head on the corner of a small glass pillar, which shattered - as did his tattooed head.

    Gavin heard the sound of breaking glass and ran from the other side of the bar with a bottle in his hand. He told me later he thought I'd been attacked with a glass. He saw my 'attacker' on the floor, but couldn't see the gash at the back of his head. Gavin whacked his bottle a few times over the skin's already-skewered skull.

    Then we both pulled him up and dragged him to the doors. His mates seemed too stunned to do anything. We threw him into one of the glass doors, which also smashed, cutting his upper arm. He kept struggling a bit, so we beat him before throwing him down the stairs. His mates followed him meekly out, only shouting abuse when they'd got safely outside.

    About half an hour later, customers near the exit doors began screaming and shouting, 'Fire! Fire!' Gavin and I ran to the stairwell and saw flames leaping up from the bar entrance. I told the manager and staff to deal with the fire. Then Gavin and I ran out through the flames into the street.

    We found the skinhead with the sore head standing there with a red petrol can in his hand. Perhaps the earlier beating had slowed his reflexes because, although he looked surprised to see us, he didn't immediately run - a significant mistake on his part. I held an Irish hurling stick in my hand. I ran across to him. He dropped the petrol can and said, 'It wasn't me. It wasn't me.' He turned to run, but I hit him across the back with the hurling stick. He fell to the ground.

    Gavin began kicking him in the head with his steel boots. The skinhead begged us not to beat him any more. Gavin stamped on his head and I hit him so hard across the back with the hurling stick that the latter broke. He lay there unconscious.

    We picked up the petrol can and doused him with the remaining petrol. The other skinhead, who'd run a short distance away, began screaming, 'Please don't burn him! Please don't burn him!'

    We told him to come to us and promised we wouldn't do anything. He wasn't daft. He stayed where he was. We gave the impression we were about to light the fire. The skinhead became hysterical. In the end, we threw down the petrol can and walked back to the club. The fire had been put out.

    As we passed through the club's crisply baked entrance, Gavin said, 'If there's one thing I hate, it's those National Front-type skinheads. I detest them. They used to hang round where I live, giving it, but when you give it them back they don't want to know.'

    'Yeah, I know,' I replied shamefacedly. I wanted the ground to swallow me up. I found myself going red. I could feel my cheeks giving off more heat than the smouldering carpet. I felt ashamed because Gavin - one of the most fair-minded and tolerant people I'd ever met - had become my friend and, unknown to him, I'd been the only type of person he actually hated. I never did tell him about my past. I couldn't bring myself to explain how I'd once been so deeply immersed in such a small-minded movement.

    A week later, the skinhead who'd run away came to the club's front door, pissed out of his head and asking for 'that fucking Paki'. Gavin and I dashed downstairs to the dissatisfied customer. Gavin said, 'What's your problem, mate?'

    'You, you Paki cunt,' said the skinhead. 'You're going to get this.'

    He took out an axe from the inside of his jacket. But before he could use it, I'd squirted him in the face with ammonia and Gavin had slashed him across the head with a blade. We threw him outside amid a flurry of kicks and punches, then slammed the door shut. The skinhead lay howling outside in the gutter. Eventually, he got up and skulked off. We received regular death threats and warnings on the grapevine, but the skinheads never came back.

    The town had plenty of wannabe Nazis. Some even tried getting elected to the local council. Around six months later, I heard a knock on the front door of my house late one evening. I opened the door to find 'Mad Bomber' Tony Lecomber canvassing for a local BNP man. I hadn't seen him for several years. I'd heard that after serving his sentence for the hobby-bombing that had almost killed him and Adolf, he'd received another three years for attacking a Jewish teacher whom he'd caught peeling off a BNP sticker on the tube.

    I'd always liked Lecomber, so I had a chat with him, because I didn't want to be rude, but I made plain he was wasting his time knocking on my door. He wouldn't be getting anything out of me, neither money nor vote.

    In July 1994, a mountain of a man called Pat Tate came out of prison after serving four years of a six-year sentence for robbery. Tucker soon recruited Tate as an enforcer for his rapidly expanding drugs empire. Tate had grand ideas. He believed 'the firm' should import drugs direct from the Continent, rather than deal with middle men. He said in prison he'd met several interesting people who'd supplied him with international contacts.

    'The firm' soon began importing large shipments of drugs - and earning large amounts of cash. Tucker, Tate and their sidekick-cum-driver Craig Rolfe lived like kings, but behaved like animals. Excessive cash led to excessive drug-taking, which led to excessive violence.

    The three of them got away with murdering one man by disguising the killing as a self-inflicted drugs overdose. Then, in March 1994, a 24-year-old man died after taking an Ecstasy pill that had been imported by 'the firm'. Having got away with murder, Tucker, Tate and Rolfe must have thought they could get away with anything. Foolishly, they began robbing rival 'firms' of large shipments of drugs. I could see that some, if not all, of us would probably end up in jail or an early grave.

    I didn't have anything to do with importing, or robbing, drugs. My job was head of security at Raquels. However, in this role I did turn a blind eye to drugs being sold at the club - if the dealers had the firm's permission to do so. I began to think about quitting. It was time, I suppose, for another new beginning, another new start. Then a dramatic event accelerated my decision-making process.

    In November 1995, Raquels and 'the firm' were catapulted into the headlines when Tucker, Tate and Rolfe's imported Ecstasy claimed a second life. Leah Betts collapsed while celebrating her 18th birthday at her father's house. She died a few days later. The tablet that killed her had been bought at the nightclub.

    I told Tucker I was leaving Raquels and quitting 'the firm'. I wanted no part in murder or the deaths of young people. Tucker and Tate threatened to kill me. I don't know if their drug consumption led them to make empty threats or whether they did genuinely intend murdering me.

    I'd never find out, because less than three weeks later the blood-soaked corpses of Tucker, Tate and Rolfe sat slumped in a Range Rover parked down a remote farm track in Essex. Each had been shot three times in the head with a shotgun.

    This event demonstrated the inadvisability of robbing other drug barons. They're not usually the sort of people who'll take you to the Small Claims Court.

    For a while, I became chief suspect, but I'd had nothing to do with the murders, and the police soon knew I was innocent. However, for me those events brought to an end my criminal way of life. I'd never been a drug dealer, but my role in charge of security at Raquels meant I'd acted as a cog in the machine that delivered drugs to those who chose to take them. I turned my back decisively on that past when I quit 'the firm' and became a prosecution witness at the trial of the man accused of supplying Leah Betts with the Ecstasy tablet that killed her.

    For my troubles, I received death threats from cowards trying to salvage some sort of gangland 'respect' in the hope that 'the firm' might maintain the reputation its deceased leaders had earned. The police advised me to move house. I had to uproot my family and live with panic alarms connected to a police station.