Wannabe in My Gang? (18 page)

On 31 October 1995, Pat Tate was released from prison and Tucker organised what he thought would be a huge party to welcome him home. It was to be held at a snooker hall in Dagenham. Tucker rang me and said he wanted me to go to the party with all the doormen; he and Tate had something they wanted to discuss with me.

I rang Tucker back that night and said I would be unable to go because I had to go to my mother’s in the Midlands. It was a lie. I was trying to get out of the situation I was in, not get more involved, and I wasn’t the only one who felt like this.

Only 15 people attended Tate’s coming-out party – a stark indication of his declining popularity. Tate and Tucker called me a few days later and we met in the car park at Basildon Hospital. They said they had a bit of work coming up in the next few weeks and they wanted me to go along with them. A bit of work meant robbing someone, usually drug dealers. I told them I wasn’t interested. Tate was agitated, as though unable to understand the words ‘no’ or ‘will not’. ‘This is fucking big,’ he said. ‘All we have to do is turn up, rob a couple of fucking idiots and we will all earn a fortune for a half hour’s work.’

I told him I still wasn’t interested. Tate and Tucker became hostile, telling me I was a waste of time and I wouldn’t be offered anything in the future. I still felt something for these people. Before mashing their brains with drugs, they had been my friends. Now they were blind to any danger, oblivious to reality. I warned Tucker to be careful, but as usual he just laughed and turned my advice into ridicule.

Leah Betts, the 17-year-old girl I had banned from Raquels six weeks earlier, was planning her 18th birthday party. Leah was looking forward to becoming an adult, as she hadn’t enjoyed the happiest of childhoods. Her parents had separated after her father Paul began a relationship with his current partner, Janet, who was married to one of his friends. Paul was in the police and his friend was a fellow officer based at the same station. When Leah’s mother Dorothy learned of Paul’s extra-marital activities she divorced him for adultery and he left the family home when Leah was just three years old. Dorothy met a man named Chris and together they moved into a house in Basildon with Leah.

On 1 September 1992, Leah’s mother collapsed and died. She was 45. Leah, who had just turned 14, was naturally devastated. It was only when Dorothy died that Leah’s father involved himself more in her upbringing. Leah chose not to live with her father, remaining with her step-father, but she did begin to visit him regularly and formed a relationship with her new family.

Leah attended Basildon College and worked in Alders department store, opposite Raquels in Basildon town centre. For months she had been telling her class and work mates what a great party she was going to have on her 18th. Whilst planning the celebrations, her father and step-mother agreed that she could have a party at their home, but they insisted there would be no alcohol because some of the guests would be under age. They also stipulated that they would remain on the premises throughout the evening.

My 14-year-old daughter and 16-year-old son think I am past it so you can only imagine how Leah must have felt when she contemplated celebrating her 18th birthday with soft drinks whilst being monitored by her parents. Leah realised that she was never going to have the great party she envisaged. Foolishly, Leah decided that she would enjoy herself regardless, by taking Ecstasy. Like thousands of other teenagers at that time, it was not the first time that Leah had experimented with drugs and so she was confident just one would do her no harm. After several failed attempts by girlfriends to get sorted, a male friend named Stephen Smith was asked to go into Raquels and purchase the Ecstasy pills for her party. Smith agreed that he would see what he could do.

On Friday, 10 November, it was business as usual in Raquels. Ecstasy, cocaine and amphetamines were being sold discreetly near the top bar. Because of his financial problems, Murray was selling the drugs himself that night. A nervous teenager sidled up to Murray and asked him if he could score. Murray nodded; the teenager held the folded notes in his hand, Murray held the Ecstasy pills in his. They pretended to shake hands. Murray took the money, the teenager the pills. The fate of Leah Betts was sealed. That deal was going to end her life and change a lot of other people’s.

Unfortunately for Leah, the drugs which were purchased from Murray were the Ecstasy pills with the apple motif that had come from Tucker and had been indirectly financed by John ‘Gaffer’ Rollinson.

That night in her father’s home, Leah, against the advice of her closest friend who had been given a warning about the strength of this particular batch, took one Ecstasy pill. As the party wore on, some of the other revellers took Ecstasy and others smoked cannabis. Ex-policeman Paul Betts, who had danced with Leah in the room where all the revellers were, later said he had neither smelt the cannabis nor noticed anything unusual.

On Monday, 13 November 1995, I was filling my car up with petrol at a garage. I was thinking about Christmas of all things. It had been a bad year. Once Christmas was out of the way I could concentrate on the New Year, a fresh start and hopefully a new beginning. I had severed all links with the Krays and their hangers-on and my pending court case for possessing a gun would soon see me out of Raquels and out of the Essex firm’s murky circle. Things, I thought, were looking up for me.

As I walked to the garage kiosk, I glanced at the news stand. Every newspaper had a picture of a girl on the front page. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slack, agape and there were tubes everywhere. I picked up a tabloid out of curiosity and paid for the petrol. I looked at the picture and thought to myself, what a waste. I turned the page and a picture of Raquels leapt out at me.

The article said an 18-year-old girl was on a life-support machine after taking an Ecstasy pill bought at the club. My heart sank. I knew this was going to cause serious grief. When I got in I sat on the stairs and put my head in my hands. I wasn’t sure what to do. I rang Mark Murray but his phone was unobtainable. Then I tried ringing Tucker, but like Murray, he had gone to ground.

The following day I was out of town. I had a court case in Birmingham I had to attend – various driving offences, nothing serious. I was banned for 12 months and fined £330.

Driving back down from the court case I heard nothing but reports about Leah’s condition and the police enquiry on the radio. Four addresses were raided that morning in Basildon. One of them was Tate’s flat, where Tucker’s mistress Donna Garwood was living. A quantity of amphetamine was found, not a lot, just a bit of personal, but the fact that they’d raided Tate’s flat indicated the police knew the firm was involved in the supply chain. I didn’t think it would be too long before they rounded us all up for questioning.

A couple of days later at around 11 p.m., I received a telephone call from a man who introduced himself as Steve Packman. He told me that he was on police bail for ‘the Leah thing’. ‘I’ve got to go back to the police station for supplying the pill which Leah took,’ he said. I told him I had no idea who he was and asked him what he wanted from me. He said he had heard the door staff at Raquels had a problem with him over Leah collapsing. I told him that nobody I knew had a problem with him or anybody else and he should forget anything he had heard. Packman asked if I would meet him, but I told him it was very late and I was very tired – if he really needed to speak to me, he should call me at a reasonable hour.

I didn’t have a very good night’s sleep that night. The call played on my mind.

In an effort to help me distance myself from my criminal associates, I had decided to move out of Basildon. Debra and I had purchased a house in Mayland, a small village located about 15 miles outside Basildon.

We were due to move the following morning. Debra had left before I got up because she had to go and wait for items that were due to be delivered to our new home. I took the children to school and then drove to Mayland where I found Debra standing at the front door. ‘Have you heard what’s happened?’ she asked. ‘Leah Betts has died.’

I knew at once that the firm was now living on borrowed time; if Tucker and Tate’s ludicrous robbery plans didn’t bring us down, Leah’s death surely would. Around lunchtime Tucker rang me. He was going mental. He was saying he wanted this Betts mess sorted out and he wanted it sorted out today. There was too much attention both on him and on the firm in general, he said.

Because Packman and his co-accused were under 18, police had been unable to name them. This lack of information resulted in investigative reporters descending on Basildon en masse and they were being told in confidence by people in pubs that Murray, Tucker and myself were involved in the drugs chain which had supplied Leah. The reporters were then questioning people about our other activities and Tucker convinced himself they would soon open a can of worms he would never be able to re-seal. Now Leah had died, Tucker said, ‘the shit is going to hit the fan’. He had been planning his retirement with Tate and didn’t want this to interfere with it. I explained to him about the phone call from Steve Packman and he suggested we let people know exactly who was being blamed for supplying Leah so that the media interest in the firm would fade away and he could get on with his business. ‘Look, if he’s on fucking bail for it, he’s the one who’s going to be nicked for killing her, not us,’ he said. ‘If he’s already in the frame, there’s nothing we can do about it. It’s not grassing and I don’t need this shit now.’

Tucker was like a demented tyrant. He knew his empire was crumbling but he wanted to cling on to it until the bitter end.

The Thursday night after Leah’s death, I sat down at work, trying to decide what to do about Steve Packman. I had to face the fact that the only way to stop reporters trying to unearth evidence against myself and the firm would be if Packman was identified in a newspaper. That way everyone would know that a person had been arrested and he was not a member of our firm or in any way connected to us. I rang Tucker to discuss it, but he didn’t want to know. ‘Do what you think is best, but get it sorted,’ he snapped.

It was all right for him to take a back seat. I was the head doorman at Raquels, the fucking fall guy everyone had firmly in their sights. Uncertain and uneasy, I decided to put my foot in the water. I had to sort this out.

I spoke to a reporter I’d known for several years. I told him about Packman and said I was going to arrange a meeting with him. The reporter said he would be keen to get the first photograph of the man who had allegedly supplied Leah and said he would be there when the meeting took place. I rang the reporter a few days later and told him I had arranged to meet Packman at a garage in Basildon. The reporter said that when I did meet Packman, the conversation would have to be recorded. He said this was to safeguard his newspaper in case Packman tried to sue them for any reason. Reluctantly, I agreed.

‘What went on, then?’ I asked when Packman and I finally met.

He said that he knew Leah and her friend Sarah Cargill. They had been planning Leah’s forthcoming 18th birthday party. Leah and Sarah had said they wanted to get gear for it.

They approached a friend, Louise Yexley, who was unable to get anything, but said she would ask her boyfriend Stephen Smith if he could help. Smith and his friend, Steve Packman, had gone into Raquels after a night out at Romford dog track. Smith had made some amateurish efforts to obtain drugs, but when he had approached people and asked if they had Ecstasy for sale they told him they didn’t know what he was on about. Smith said to Packman that if a dealer approached him, he was to come and tell him. While Packman was standing at the top bar, a man asked him if he was sorted. Packman described the man to me as wearing a blue Schott bomber jacket, with long, curly shoulder-length hair. I knew at once that he was describing Mark Murray. He said he returned to Stephen Smith, who gave him the money. He told me he then bought the pills, which were later passed down the chain of friends to Leah. Packman told me he hadn’t said this to the police. He’d told the police he was so drunk that night, he couldn’t remember anything. I told Packman that he hadn’t caused us any problem, it was just one of those things. We shook hands and he walked off into the night. I went over to the reporters who had been photographing Packman from a van. Nothing untoward had been said about me and nobody had implicated the firm. The reporter now had an exclusive photograph of the man who was on bail and who was going to be photographed in any event when he finally appeared at court.

Tucker would be happy because attention would be taken away from him and the firm as soon as Packman’s picture appeared in the press. The management at Raquels would be happy because Leah hadn’t been in the club on that night and so they couldn’t be held in any way responsible for her death. I was happy because it was all over, or so it appeared.

I gave the tape to the reporters, said I didn’t want to see them again and walked off. I wasn’t offered money for the story or the pictures and I have never received any.

Whatever happened regarding the Leah Betts inquiry, common sense told me that matters were coming to a head.

There was Tucker and Tate’s ridiculous plan to rob a shipment of drugs and the fact that when I appeared in court for possessing the gun and the gas I would lose my door licence and, as a consequence, my income. We had reached the end of our reign. I had been told Tucker had consulted a solicitor about the possibility of him being arrested in connection with the Betts case, but he denied it when I asked him. I did not know it at the time but Murray had been arrested, questioned and released by officers the morning after Leah had collapsed. As soon as he had been bailed, he fled without saying a word to me. I did not know anything about what happened to Leah until I picked up that newspaper two days after she had collapsed. The ship was sinking and it was clear to me that it was now every man for himself. If I was put out of work, nobody was going to pay me any money and nobody was going to look after my family. I decided I couldn’t wait for the end, I was going to start rebuilding my life immediately. I had been waiting for too many tomorrows to arrive – if I didn’t act now I would never get out of the mess I was in.