Wannabe in My Gang? (33 page)

A full-scale bejewelled replica of Dave’s trademark knuckleduster is a must-have for every fan. Mounted on a plinth and with an engraved plate, it will sit very proudly on your desk. (Not to be used as an offensive weapon.) £24.99 + £5.50 carriage (insured).

A presentation set consisting of a 10cl bottle of superb brandy liqueur and a specially engraved miniature brandy glass in a sumptuous black satin lined box. Of course, we don’t expect you to actually drink the brandy, because this is a one off limited edition presentation set that we expect to grow in value once all the sets are sold. But, if you DO decide to drink it, then you are in for a superb drinking experience.

Due to the amount of e-mails we have received requesting a Dave Courtney Clock, we are proud to launch ‘The Dave Courtney Knuckle Duster Wall/Mantle Clock’. Using the very latest Laser Technology, we produced this clock from 2mm stainless steel (brass will follow soon). It measures 6’ x 10’ and currently comes in 3 finished effects: Antique Pewter, Polished Aluminium and Matt Black. Each one comes embellished with 15 of the finest Austrian Crystals and the highest quality German Quartz Movement and is backed by a 12 month guarantee, all for only £25.00. It has a wall fixing as standard but a stand is available for £1.50 which converts it to a mantle clock.

Dave Courtney lighters, which are described as standard disposable lighters transformed from a lump of tacky coloured plastic into a stylish fashion statement. There are also key rings. Well, not quite ‘just’ key rings. Both carry Dave’s knuckleduster logo and signature in gold. One is on leather and the other’s a bottle opener.

One can only imagine how jealous Gaffer and the other wannabe underworld kings must feel as they look on at the master of bullshit in awe. Periodically, they surface to try and snatch some limelight but inevitably they soon fade back into oblivion.

During the Iraq conflict Gaffer appeared in the
Basildon Evening Echo
newspaper claiming Prime Minister Tony Blair had telephoned him to thank him for his support after he had written to the PM backing his stance on the need for war. Gaffer said, ‘The voice said, “Is that John Rollinson?” And I said, “I don’t know, mate, you rang me.” When he started speaking I knew who it was.’

Gaffer refused to discuss the confidential conversation he had with Mr Blair but he did say he mentioned his criminal history later on in their conversation. He said: ‘I told him to buy my book, and once he reads that, he won’t ring again.’ I cannot say whether or not Gaffer is telling the truth about this story, although I am sure there will be one or two in Essex who will think it was an attempt to get his book some much-needed publicity.

However, I am confident that Mr Blair will not be buying Gaffer’s book and he will not be ringing him again, regardless. It is a missed opportunity for the PM because in Gaffer, Mr Blair has a true admirer. Gaffer told the reporter that, ‘Tony Blair is a man of England and has stood by his beliefs and I admire him for that. He does stand to lose his job, but I think he will win the next election. He has the support of the underworld.’

It would undoubtedly be an interesting partnership, the king of spin united with the masters of bullshit. One suspects it’s a marriage that will never take place.

15

THE RIDE BREAKS DOWN AND THE JESTER IS UNMASKED

Almost 15 years after the brutal murder of a private investigator named Daniel Morgan, a chain of events was set in motion that was to expose Dave Courtney as a registered police informant, the very thing he himself has repeatedly said he despises. In 1987 Morgan was found slumped in a south London pub car park with an axe embedded in his skull. Not only was £1,000 left in the dead man’s pocket, but sticking plaster had been wound around the axe handle to ensure no fingerprints were left behind.

Equally intriguing were the startling allegations made in the aftermath of his brutal murder. It was claimed that Morgan had been about to expose police wrongdoing or corruption and that officers may have been involved in his killing. No evidence came to light to support these claims. Morgan had run a company called Southern Investigations; his partner, Jonathon Rees, was charged with his murder, but the case against him was dropped by the Director of Public Prosecutions because of lack of evidence. Despite the collapse of the case, the police remained determined to solve the murder, not least because it had cast a shadow over their integrity.

In 1987, around the same time as Daniel Morgan had been murdered, Dave Courtney says that he was approached by a detective constable named Austin Warnes, who told him that he was a corrupt officer and was prepared to help Courtney if needed. Dodgy Dave claims that Warnes was ‘a bit of a villain groupie who loved to hang about with the criminal fraternity’.

I was living in East Dulwich at this time and I had an interest in a number of nightclubs in the Old Kent Road, Peckham, Woolwich, Abbey Wood and the West End. Not long after I first met Warnes he saw me at a nightclub.

On that same night, funnily enough, there was a geezer there called Tony Thompson, who was working on a book called
Gangland Britain
. Anyway, Thompson was stood next to me when Warnes approached me, said he’d heard about me, and made it clear that he was a bent copper and that he had information that some of my friends were being looked at.

Courtney says he decided to use DC Warnes to obtain information about police activity concerning himself and his associates, but in order to do so he had to become what he now calls a fake informant. Being a fake was nothing new for Courtney but being an informant brought him closer to DC Warnes and the two shared a fairly active social life together. These were certainly not nights out dancing at the policeman’s ball. The unlikely duo would go to fetish clubs, snort cocaine together and visit sordid private sex parties hosted by perverted sexual deviants for the benefit of other perverted sexual deviants. Wife swapping, sadomasochism, bondage and gay sex were all put on offer for the fake police informant and his bent police handler.

Courtney’s story about not being a real informant began to lack credibility when he alleged that not only DC Warnes but police officers nationwide were involved in fake informant scams. Dodgy Dave claimed that police officers were filling in informant contact sheets with false information, presenting them to their superiors and then getting their fake informant to pick up ‘20, 30 or 40 grand in cash’ as a reward for information that had simply been made up.

According to Courtney, fake informants are people who have registered as police informants but they do not ever tell the police anything that will get anybody into trouble.

All the fake informant does is milk the police for information, escape prosecution for motoring offences, avoid paying parking fines, give false information about non-existent criminals and collect hundreds or thousands of pounds in rewards from the police. I have always known why lottery winners choose not to be identified and if Courtney is to be believed, I now know why police informants ask to remain anonymous also.

This kind of get-rich-quick, no-questions-asked scheme may happen in Dave’s mind, but it cannot happen in the real world. The police usually recruit informants from those under investigation or facing prosecution. Police tell would-be informants that they can make life easier for them if they would be prepared to make life easier for the police and help with their enquiries. If people agree to give information to the police, that information has to be tested before any other information gleaned from them is used. If the information proves to be genuine and arrests are made, then the officer who has the relationship with the informant will go back to him or her for more. The information has to be of good quality and concern crimes of a more serious nature. The police neither have the resources nor the will to meet informants who are only prepared to tell them that Billy Smith drops litter and Mary Evans swears in public. If informants deliver regular, reliable, good-quality information, their handlers will put them forward to their superiors to become registered police informants. The informant, handler and a senior officer then have to meet and the pros and cons of becoming a registered police informant are explained to the informant. If everybody is happy, the informant signs a registered informant agreement and is given a pseudonym to use for whenever he or she contacts the handler.

This is done so people do not overhear the informant giving his or her name during telephone conversations or see the informant’s name on contact sheets which must be completed every time the police handler meets the registered informant. Dave Courtney was given the pseudonym ‘Tommy Mack’.

When an informant gives information which results in an arrest he or she is usually paid a few hundred pounds, not 20, 30 or 40 grand. There have been rare cases when an informant has been paid thousands of pounds, but these instances are very few and far between.

In order to physically collect the reward, the informant picks one of several high-street banks offered by the police and is told to go in and ask for the chief cashier. He or she then gives the chief cashier a prearranged name and is paid, over the counter, in cash. For Dave Courtney to suggest that the police have no control over the money paid to informants is beyond belief.

In 1999, the police anti-corruption unit CIB3 launched Operation Nigeria, which was an investigation set up to target the murdered private investigator Daniel Morgan’s former associates. With the backing of the Metropolitan Police’s then commissioner, Sir (now Lord) Paul Condon, warrants were obtained for the planting of listening devices in the offices of Morgan’s private investigations agency in Thornton Heath, south-west London. Operation Nigeria’s aim was two-fold: to pursue the unsolved murder of Morgan and to gather evidence about allegations that his investigations agency was involved with corrupt police officers and former detectives who had allegedly supplied confidential information and assisted with ‘other favours’.

One of CIB3’s principal targets was Jonathon Rees, who had continued to run the investigations agency after the murder charge against him had been dropped.

When the police planted the listening devices in the offices they were warned not to leave any sign whatsoever that anyone had been inside the premises, let alone planted a bug. ‘They are alert, cunning and devious individuals who have current knowledge of investigative methods and techniques which may be used against them,’ said an internal police report. ‘Such is their level of access to individuals within the police, through professional and social contacts, that the threat of compromise to any conventional investigation against them is constant and very real.’

Almost immediately, the various bugging devices began to reap rewards for the police. Visitors to the premises had asked Rees to obtain blank police charge sheets, he had agreed to pervert the course of justice over a theft, and he was waiting for police contacts to give him information about the desecration of the street memorial to the murdered black teenager, Stephen Lawrence. One police progress report stated:

Rees and [others] have for a number of years been involved in the long-term penetration of police intelligence sources. They have ensured that they have live sources within the Metropolitan Police Service and have sought to recruit sources within other police forces. Their thirst for knowledge is driven by profit to be accrued from the media . . .

Examples of those media contacts and live sources within the Metropolitan Police were revealed during the following weeks. Rees was heard expressing concern over CIB3’s arrest of a long-time associate, ex-Detective Constable Duncan Hanrahan, who ran his own private investigation company, Hanrahan Associates, with another former DC, Martin King, who was later jailed for corruption.

Although Hanrahan had turned supergrass, giving information about others, including King and Rees, he was jailed for 9 years after confessing to a string of corruption and conspiracy charges, including his involvement in a plan to rob a courier bringing £1,000,000 in cash through Heathrow airport.

In one recorded conversation, Rees appears to be explaining to someone over the phone that Hanrahan was passing information to him about CIB3’s enquiries. According to the transcript, Rees says: ‘Hanrahan said what CIB3 want to do is fuck us all. He said they keep talking about the fucking Morgan murder every time they see me.’

Later in the same taped conversation, Rees also talks about having sold a story to a reporter about Kenneth Noye, the notorious criminal then being held at Belmarsh top-security prison, following extradition from Spain to face trial for the M25 road rage murder of Stephen Cameron. Rees says he provided information about how GCHQ was involved in tracking down Noye. He also claims to have given a reporter information about what he calls personal services being provided to Noye in Belmarsh.

In another recorded telephone call, Rees was heard calling ‘a source’ and asking: ‘How are you getting on with that story?’ The ensuing conversation is summarised in a CIB3 transcript as having included mention of David Copeland, the neo-Nazi London nail bomber, then in Belmarsh Prison awaiting trial.

Copeland was said to be in a cell next to a black prisoner. The pair hated each other. Rees told the caller if he ‘can find out more about Copeland and the messages he’s receiving from God, that would be brilliant.’

A serving police officer was recorded passing information to Rees about the Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe.

A CIB3 report stated:

Rees and [others] are actively pursuing contacts with the police and business community to identify potential newsworthy stories. They then sell the information to the national media. The investigation has so far identified a serving police officer who has supplied confidential information and private investigators who can supply phone and bank account details of any person.