Wannabe in My Gang? (20 page)

On Thursday, 20 June 1996, two detectives, whose job it was to escort me to court for the committal proceedings concerning Packman and Smith, picked me up from my home. The night before I could not sleep.

I had sat at the end of my bed in the dark, wrestling with my thoughts. I’d made the agreed statement about my meeting with Packman, but I knew that today was the day that mattered. If I didn’t turn up the case would collapse and I could face three months’ imprisonment for ignoring a witness order. It almost seemed worth it. It would solve many of my problems and I would be back on-side with my associates. I looked in at my sleeping children and realised I could betray my associates but I could not betray them. Any chance I had of making my life worthwhile lay with my children. I had to do what was right despite the fact that doing right felt so wrong.

I walked out to meet my escort. I wasn’t stupid – it wasn’t there solely for my protection, it was also there to make sure that I turned up at court. On the journey to Southend Magistrates’ Court, the detectives made casual conversation, most of it about Tucker, Tate and Rolfe. One of the detectives had been present at Broomfield hospital in Chelmsford when the three had been laid out in the morgue. He told me that Tucker and Rolfe had been badly disfigured. ‘Big fucking geezers, weren’t they, Bernie? Their heads were a right mess,’ he said. I wanted him to shut up, to not make any conversation with me. I didn’t even want to hear him speak. The thought of getting friendly with the police made my stomach churn. It wasn’t the men – I had known decent police officers – it was their authority, their uniform and the past experiences I had endured that filled me with loathing.

When we arrived at Southend, I was driven straight into the police station via a back entrance. I was told they didn’t want the press or cameramen getting anywhere near me. ‘Let’s keep it low-key, Bernie,’ one of them said.

Once inside I was led through a maze of corridors, the detectives flashing their warrant cards to get numerous locked doors opened. We passed through the custody area and eventually into the court building. We climbed a dozen narrow, wooden steps and emerged into the dock of the court. The proceedings had not yet started so the court was empty. I looked across from my more familiar position in the dock to the witness stand. I was going to have to stand on that platform and publicly assist those I had spent my life resenting. I was once more in turmoil. If I walked out now, I would be condemned as the man who had brought about the collapse of the Leah Betts trial, a girl who in death had become a national icon in the war against the evil drug trade.

The papers would have a field day speculating as to why I would rather face prison than awkward questions. The bitter finger of suspicion would once more be levelled at me.

I could face prison, I could endure the press and the gossip, but could my family? They didn’t deserve to have to endure anything, as they had done nothing. The detectives must have sensed my anguish as they suddenly decided that we should all leave the court and get some tea sent up to another room. I laughed out loud, but I didn’t tell them why I was laughing. I was thinking of my mother. Whatever the crisis, however dire the situation, she always resorted to saying, ‘We had better make some tea.’

At 10 a.m. I was called into court. Packman looked sheepishly around the room, wanting to avoid eye contact with me. Only he and I knew the truth about what really happened at our meeting on the garage forecourt. I had nothing to lose and I genuinely hoped that he would be acquitted. Once I had been seen to fulfil my promise, neither the police nor the press could criticise me.

Old-style committals are, in effect, dress rehearsals for a Crown Court trial. The magistrates listen to the evidence and the witnesses under cross-examination and decide whether the matter should proceed to a full trial with a jury. I was in the witness box for an hour and three-quarters and at the end of it, the magistrates decided that the case would go to trial. I felt dirty leaving the court, but the police were jubilant. It was a real kick in the teeth when they actually thanked me. I couldn’t wait to get home. I wanted the events of 1995 to have some sort of closure. The police dropped me off, wished me luck and disappeared down the drive. I wondered if they would be slagging me off and laughing. Paranoid? I doubt it.

My conversion from regular defendant to prosecution witness did little or nothing for my relationship with the police – other than those connected with the Betts case that is.

For several years I had rented out a house I owned in London and a flat in Staffordshire for a bit of additional income. To be honest, it was hardly lucrative, but I kept it going so my children could have a bit of capital in the future. A young couple moved into the flat in Staffordshire but despite assurances, they didn’t appear to have any money to pay the rent. They told me they were employed; I don’t know why they lied. It would have made no difference to me if they had claimed their rent from the benefit agency or paid it to me themselves. When I contacted them about the rent, which was getting seriously in arrears, they told me they had been paid by cheque and were waiting for it to clear. Then when pressed, they said the cheque had been cancelled as they were no longer going to be paid monthly. Eventually, after receiving no money whatsoever, I went to the flat to talk to them, but nobody was there. I let myself in and found amongst the post, various letters from the DHSS regarding their claim for benefit.

It soon became apparent that they had fraudulently signed my name and entered my details to claim housing benefit for the rent. I waited for them to come home and told them they had to leave within seven days. When I went back at the end of that period, they were still there so I started to put their possessions in the street – admittedly via the upstairs window.

As I dragged the larger items outside, they locked the door and called the police. Two police officers arrived and told me I wasn’t allowed back into my own flat and if I had damaged any of the couple’s property I would be arrested. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing.

Amongst the letters in the flat, I had found one from a magistrates’ court stating that the man who had rented my flat had a warrant out for his arrest over non-payment of fines. Yet here were the police giving him sanctuary in my fucking flat. I told the police that whatever they said ‘these people were going today’. The officers called for back-up on the radio and within minutes five police cars came roaring down the road, blue lights flashing and sirens wailing. It was a total farce. Four officers went into the flat, two stood guard at the door and the others surrounded Debra, who had come to see what the fuss was about. The police told us that we had to prove that the flat was ours, so Debra rang our solicitor and asked him to attend in person. The solicitor arrived an hour later and confirmed to the police that we owned the flat. However, the police said that the couple in the flat still had rights. ‘You can’t just go in. You have to get a certificate from a magistrate backing your claim that the flat is yours and then show it to the squatters.’

I totally flipped. ‘Fucking squatters, fucking ponces! When you’re gone I am going to put them out and back in the gutter.’

One of the police officers grabbed my shirt and I pushed him back.

For a moment it looked as if it was all going to end in violence but one of the officers, who knew me well, stepped forward and asked everybody to calm down. ‘Bernie, we’re leaving a WPC to guard the door. Go and start the legal process. Whatever you think, you are not going to get into that flat today.’ I knew that if I remained, I would end up being arrested so I stayed at my mother’s home that evening and went to the flat the following morning. What I found was a scene of carnage.

The police had gone and the front door was ajar. All the furniture in the flat, which I owned, had been slashed with a Stanley knife. The bed had been slashed, the three-piece suite had been slashed and used tampons and excrement had been smeared on the walls. The place was totally wrecked. The incident was reported in the
Daily Mirror
after a reporter who had heard about what had happened to us contacted Debra.

SQUATTERS TRASHED MY HOME AS POLICE STOOD GUARD

Squatters destroyed a mum’s flat while police guarded the front door to keep her out. The intruders ripped open furniture and daubed excrement on walls, but hairdresser Debra King was left outside in tears after police told her these people have rights. Mother of two Debra, 30, has asked the
Mirror
to investigate and demanded £1,000 compensation from the police. She said the money would only replace what has been destroyed, ‘the police couldn’t afford to pay for the upset this has caused me’. She said, ‘I tried to get in with my boyfriend, but five police cars pulled up and we were threatened with arrest. A policewoman was put on guard in case we harassed the intruders.

‘I called my solicitor but he could do nothing and police told me, “These people still have rights, you can’t go in.”’

Police told Debra that she could not get in without a certificate from magistrates backing the claim that the flat was hers and it would have to be shown to the squatters. But while she started the legal process, the squatters fled, shredding a three-piece suite, two double beds and curtains with a knife, and spreading excrement, urine and used tampons around. ‘I returned the next day to find it completely and utterly trashed,’ she said.

She has since discovered that there was an arrest warrant out for one of the squatters for non-payment of fines while another made false claims for Social Security benefits using her address. ‘I was warned not to intimidate or harass these squatters but no one warned them not to damage my property or do the awful things they did.

‘The police officer may have protected the squatters’ rights but they certainly didn’t protect mine. I am a victim of a system that simply doesn’t care. It’s pathetic.’

Staffordshire police said last night that they could not comment as a complaint had been received. A spokesman said, ‘The matter is being investigated. An act of law covers the squatters’ rights which is a very complicated issue.’

If this is how law-abiding people were treated, I knew going straight was going to be hard. If I had still been involved with the firm, these people would have been ejected there and then, and probably through the same window as their possessions.

On Wednesday, 13 November 1996, my friend Mark Shinnick was arrested in possession of drugs with an estimated street value of £2,000,000.

Five kilos of cocaine, 24 kilos of amphetamine and 10 kilos of Ecstasy were discovered hidden in a false floor of his van. Mark Shinnick was married to Carol Mellin, whose brother Roger had been sentenced to five years’ imprisonment after he was caught with Mark Murray’s drugs in a Basildon hotel room. When Roger had been sent to prison and Murray had fled following Leah’s death, the villains at the top of that particular drug supply chain had demanded their money back. Roger had no money and neither did his family. The villains, a family who it is said run north London, were not prepared to listen to excuses. In an effort to repay them, Mark had ‘agreed’ to drive a van back from Holland to settle the debt.

Customs officers thought Mark had been acting suspiciously and so they followed his van, stopped and searched it and discovered the £2,000,000-worth of drugs hidden within. I had always got on well with Mark. He wasn’t a violent man – quite the opposite in fact, he was quiet and held a well-paid job. Mark had told me that he came out of work one day and a young member of this notorious crime family was waiting for him.

‘It was all very friendly. The man was at pains to point out that he understood my position and that it was a shame Roger had been nicked and the gear had been seized. But these villains still wanted their money.’ Mark was under no illusions as to his position and he ‘agreed’ to smuggle the drugs into the country from the continent using his works van. I felt desperately sorry for Carol – her brother was serving five years for drug offences and Mark received a twelve-year sentence. It was a story I saw unfold many, many times. Bait the victim with friendship, promises of huge rewards and protection, get him or her into debt, give them a drug habit or both. Then, through fear and intimidation, offer the victim a way out, the end result of which is usually a prison cell or a grave.

I wanted to talk to Carol, to try and help, but she had enough problems without me adding to them by my presence. I drove around to their house early one morning to put a note through the door. They lived on a normal working-class estate, children’s bicycles lay discarded in gardens, while Fords, Vauxhalls and vans adorned with adverts for plastering and dry lining filled either side of the road. As I sat there, I recalled all the events that had occurred in their street. Opposite Mark’s home was Jason Vella’s flat. Vella was a notorious Basildon villain who had stabbed one of his victims with a sword before the man had leaped from an upstairs window. Vella was later sentenced to 17 years’ imprisonment. He would have received a lesser sentence if he had killed the man.

I thought about the night Tucker, Rolfe and I had gone to Mark and Carol’s house looking for Murray, his terrified girlfriend in tow; about Mark’s son’s birthday party which my own children had attended; parties when Raquels had closed for the night but we were still in the mood for more; Murray on the settee boasting openly about his big plans; Murray sidling up to me, quietly asking for advice on his crumbling empire and the ever-present threat of violence from Tucker. They were all gone now: hiding, locked up or dead.

I put the note through the door. All I wanted to say was that I was sorry about Mark’s imprisonment and that I was thinking of him. I felt bad not knocking and saying it to her face, but I thought it was best that way.