Wannabe in My Gang? (27 page)

Mark had told friends that he had agreed to do voluntary work for Mission Aid, but checks with the Charity Commission had revealed that Mission Aid had ceased to exist two years previously. It also emerged that Mark had made a trip to the Congo two years earlier and had recently visited Russia and California, supposedly in connection with charity work. I thought the survival skills Mark had employed whilst hiding out in the woods after hacking off Bernie Burns’s head and hands would be coming in useful now that he was trying to avoid the Brazzaville police. The journalist said he still had no idea of Mark’s whereabouts or why he had been held without charge for two months. ‘It’s not very clear what is behind this,’ he said. ‘There is a civil war there and the authorities are very sensitive about people he may have had contact with.’

A few days later, Mark contacted the Foreign Office and told them he was alive and well, but he would not give them his location. It was later reported in the press that Mark had been sentenced to death in his absence by a court in the Congo. Wherever Mark was, I was sure he would not be hanging around there. Mark is an extremely adventurous, up-for-it man. Intelligent, fit and quick to spot an earner, many of his exploits seem somewhat eccentric to those who meet him.

In 1985, Mark had wanted to find a descendant of the dinosaurs called Mokele-mbembe, an African version of the Loch Ness monster, which is said to inhabit uncharted swamps. Together with another man, Bill Gibbons, he set up Operation Congo in the hope of gaining financial sponsorship. Mark did eventually go on the trip but failed to find the creature.

Bill Gibbons was greatly influenced by an American missionary couple he met, and according to a relative of another member of the expedition, he found God in the jungle. I suppose finding God is a better result than finding the African Loch Ness monster. Only Mark knows what he found in the jungle and why he chose to return there 14 years later. I have a sneaking suspicion it was not God or he would have brought him down to meet me at Raquels.

I heard nothing else of Mark until May 2001 when he and several other people were arrested for importing drugs onto a Suffolk beach by boat. Mark was named as the leader of the drugs gang, which aimed to import high-grade herbal cannabis and amphetamine from Holland. The plan was foiled when customs and excise officers, backed by armed police, intercepted the gang. Customs officers had observed Mark over a period of months carrying out checks on remote beaches on the east coast. Maps and notes giving marks out of ten for good landing spots were later found.

The notes, written in Mark’s handwriting, gave Bawdsey Quay in Suffolk ten out of ten as the ideal site for landing drugs. Mark and another man had travelled from Dover to Zeebrugge and then on to the Netherlands, where they acquired 3.3 kilos of amphetamine and 40 kilos of ‘skunk’ cannabis with a street value of around £60,000. They loaded the drugs into a specially designed motorboat, which had arrived from Point Clear near Clacton. They then travelled back to the UK via the Channel Tunnel to await the return of the boat at Bawdsey Bay beach. A reception party of almost 100 customs officers, firearms officers from Essex, Norfolk, Suffolk and Kent police forces and a Suffolk police helicopter swooped as the boat landed at 8 a.m.

The trial was held at Woolwich Crown Court in south London. Alongside Mark in the dock stood Brian Richardson, a man I knew well from Dagenham; John McCann, another man I had met on the Essex scene; and Guy Clements, a doorman at a nightclub called The Venue in Ilford. I had heard of Clements – he had been involved with an Essex chapter of the Hell’s Angels. Another man, Matthew Howes, had also worked as a nightclub doorman. Two females had also been arrested: Denise Smith, the manager of The Venue, and Bonnie Simon, who was a lap dancer at Stringfellows nightclub and tabloid topless model. Both females were acquitted. Richardson was sentenced to three-and-a-half years, Clements and Howes to three and Mark Rothermel was given five.

I had written to the Crown Prosecution Service after the first two court hearings concerning the knife incident with Gaffer and asked them to drop the charges, as there was little or no evidence to disprove my version of events and only a little to support theirs, but they refused. Changing tack, I made a lot of the fact that the detective had mistakenly recorded my reply to the charge, a point which would prove extremely embarrassing for Essex Police should it be aired in open court. Eventually, after a lot of haggling and mind-numbing games, they dropped both the charges.

The case had attracted publicity locally when the management at the Festival Leisure Park announced that they had decided to ban me from the complex for life. This meant I couldn’t take my children to the cinema, Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, bowling or any of the other normal activities children enjoy. To ensure I got the point, they even sent me an official certificate which carried my punishment of being cast out into the wilderness for life in fancy bold type. Choosing to ignore their petulance, I took my children into the drive-through at McDonald’s a few weeks later. Within minutes, four police cars arrived and we were asked to leave. When I pointed out I hadn’t been convicted of any wrongdoing, I was told it was not me the management were concerned about, it was other people having a go at me. ‘You are being banned for your own safety,’ the officer said with a wry smile. When I stopped laughing, I drove off.

I had been banned from working as a doorman for seven years, banned for life from setting foot in Bas Vegas and was being attacked by dope heads when I went for a drink with my girlfriend. For what? Apart from giving evidence in the Betts case, what had I done to warrant such treatment? I didn’t need to be told it was time to move on.

I had expanded considerably the haulage business I managed in Cambridgeshire and it was now taking up more and more of my time. My working day was growing longer and this was affecting my relationship with Emma. Her mother had recently been killed in a tragic accident and Emma was feeling isolated and lonely when I wasn’t there. The answer was staring me in the face, I had to leave Essex. Emma and I moved to a place called Stanground in Peterborough and soon settled in. It’s hard to describe how I felt – it was as if the troubles of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. For the first time in years, I felt free.

As a parting shot, I had decided that I would make a complaint against the police officers who had not taken me for medical treatment and the officer who had written down ‘guilty’ on my charge sheet when, in actual fact, the tape-recording of my response to the charge clearly proved that I had made no reply whatsoever. I made these complaints against Essex Police on 9 June 1999. Two years and eight months after the incident with Gaffer, Essex Police finally managed to complete their investigation into my complaint. They had only spent six months investigating the murders of Tucker, Tate and Rolfe so why it took almost three years to investigate a simple complaint, which only involved myself and officers from the same force, I shall never know.

Out of eight separate complaints surrounding the incident, only one was found in my favour. This complaint had been that a detective had incorrectly recorded the reply I gave to him when charged. Fortunately, he could not dispute this as the written record and tape-recording of the interview had not been ‘lost’, as so many important items are these days in police stations.

In a letter to me, the Police Complaints Authority concluded:

The officer did record an incorrect reply to the caution following charge. It is the intention of the Force to have the officer seen by his Divisional Commander and advised with regard to the importance of accurately recording information. Advice is a form of police discipline, similar to an oral warning, and is neither given nor received lightly.

The officer had told his superiors that he had made an error because he was writing his reply from memory.

When a suspect makes no comment whatsoever and a police officer writes down the suspect has said he is guilty, I would suggest that the officer needs more than advice. With such a poor memory he certainly shouldn’t be gathering evidence.

In October 1999, I heard that my good friend Darren Pearman (from the Epping Forest Country Club and a member of the Canning Town firm) had been having a bit of trouble with Ronnie Fuller, one of the doormen I had worked with at the Ministry of Sound. Ronnie was working on the door one evening at a venue in north London. Darren was in the club with the rest of the Canning Town firm and they had got into a row with somebody. It was said that Darren hit a man in the face with a beer bottle so Ronnie had no choice but to ask Darren to leave. Once outside, the threats started. People were telling each other they ‘were dead’, saying, ‘We’ll be back’, and all the usual threats that are made outside nightclubs up and down the country every weekend.

Ronnie thought nothing of it as he’d heard these threats a thousand times. The only problem was, he hadn’t heard them from Darren Pearman and the Canning Town firm. If they tell you they’re coming back, be sure to expect them.

Not long afterwards, Darren, his brother and the rest of their firm were in the Epping Forest Country Club where I had worked and first met Darren and Ronnie. The Canning Town firm were in the Casino Bar enjoying themselves. Ronnie was working where I used to work – in the Atlantic Bar, where they played jungle music, and where most of the revellers went to dance. Later on in the evening, the Canning Town firm left the Casino Bar and went over to the bar where Ronnie was on the door.

Nobody was quite sure what happened next, but a scuffle turned into a massive brawl. During the chaos that ensued, Darren and his brother were both stabbed. Under no circumstances would members of the Canning Town firm call the police and calling an ambulance always results in alerting the police, so Darren was put into a taxi and rushed to hospital.

Sadly, Darren never made it. He died en route. He was 27 years old. Ronnie and two other men were arrested in connection with his murder but when the police sought witnesses, members of the Canning Town firm and others refused to assist. They told police they would sort out matters themselves. Eventually, because of lack of evidence, Ronnie and the other two men were released. If I had been Ronnie, I would have left the country, but Ronnie underestimated the friends of Darren Pearman. The Canning Town firm are without doubt, the real deal. You fuck with them at your peril. Ronnie did take some precautions – he moved approximately 20 miles from Loughton in Essex to Grays, also in Essex. It was never going to be far enough.

Throughout his endless years in prison, death was always going to be Reg Kray’s biggest enemy. Release would have left Reg free to enjoy his notoriety and make the most of his celebrity status, but fame had rigged the odds in death’s favour. With every book he published and every year that passed, the chance of him ever gaining freedom lessened.

Reg knew deep down that so long as he promoted the name Kray he would never be free, but he could never sit in prison and not enjoy his celebrity status. It was his name that kept him going, but time was closing in on him.

Had Reg played the game and served his sentence without the publicity, he would have been released in the spring of 1998, having served his full 30-year recommended sentence. He would also have been free to seek out whatever medical advice he needed and the cancer he didn’t yet know he had would almost certainly have been discovered in its early stages. Instead, during those last two years, while the prison doctors were dismissing his complaints of agonising pain and chronic constipation, and prescribing milk of magnesia and yet more milk of magnesia, the cancer had been advancing in Reggie’s body, moving from his bladder to his bowel. The crisis came in the second week of August 2000 when he suddenly vomited black bile and blood while in his cell. An ambulance rushed him from Wayland Prison to a hospital in Norwich.

There the doctors took his medical condition more seriously and investigations confirmed a major intestinal blockage needing immediate surgery. During the four-hour operation, doctors discovered a tumour the size of a man’s fist in his bowel and, at one point, thought he was dying from a heart attack. In fact, because of the loss of blood, Reggie’s heart had faltered. When he came round from the operation, hope continued for some sort of recovery, but tests carried out soon made it clear that he was going to die. The cancer was aggressive and the blockage total. Reg couldn’t eat or even drink. His only nourishment was through an intravenous drip. A drain was inserted in his kidneys; morphine controlled the pain.

Pressure grew on the Home Secretary to grant Reggie compassionate release. His lawyers had sent the Home Secretary a letter and then, after waiting year in and year out for the Home Secretary to recommend his release, it was granted so quickly that Reg found it hard to believe that he was finally free. The Home Office announced: ‘As an act of mercy, under Section 31 of the Criminal Justice Act, Her Majesty’s Secretary of State for Home Affairs has seen fit to grant Reg Kray his liberty.’

Now that Reg could hardly walk and was unable to feed himself, he was, for what it was worth, ‘free’. Although he had the freedom he had craved for over 30 years, there was nowhere he could go. Despite the numerous books, newspaper articles and a film that had all helped him remain behind bars, Reggie Kray, king of the London underworld, was broke. The manager of the Town House Hotel on the outskirts of Norwich offered Reg his honeymoon suite with riverside views and a four-poster bed for £37.50 a night. Reggie accepted. Bill Curbishley, friend of the Kray family and wealthy manager of The Who, agreed to pay the hotel bill. The glamorous and celebrity-packed life Reg had talked about for decades was going to end in a low-budget room that he couldn’t even afford.

Ten months had passed since the murder of Darren Pearman. Rather foolishly, people started to believe that his death was not to be avenged. What they didn’t appreciate was that it takes time to organise an assassination. The assassins need to know where the target lives, works and when it is safest to carry out the hit. Darren Pearman’s murder had far from been forgotten. His friends were as angry ten months on as they had been on the night he died.