The Iceman

The phone call from Liverpool was short and to the point. ‘We don’t give a fuck whose fault it is. We want our money. He used your name so it is your problem.’

For Jamie Stevenson it was a very big problem. One of his trusted Merseyside wholesalers was owed £80,000 for a consignment of cocaine. The person who had taken delivery was Tommy McGovern but he was refusing to pay. Tommy had got the drugs on credit by using Stevenson’s name as a reference. Therefore, it was Stevenson who had to come up with the cash – or deal with the defaulter.

It was a contact of Stevenson’s but Tommy just decided to blank it. He had it on tick but wasn’t going to pay. The Liverpool boys were not happy and it was up to Stevenson and Tony to get it sorted. There was a big fall-out and they both went up against Tommy. The only way to sort it would be to kill Tommy but Tony could not cross that line. The family would never have agreed to that.

If you bump your supplier, you must be seen to be doing something about it. If you don’t, then the English boys will take it up with you.

Long-running brotherly squabbles between Tony and Tommy, separated in age by only two years, had long been a feature of the McGovern household but this sibling rivalry was about to reach a new low. Tony and Stevenson had begun to do more side deals of their own. Tommy resented being cut out. He was often called upon to do the dirty work but increasingly suspected that he was not getting his fair share of the money.

The McGovern mob bought large quantities of heroin, coke, cannabis, Ecstasy and speed, mainly from Liverpool, sometimes London and occasionally directly from Europe. This was cut and distributed – tenner bags to junkies, pills to clubbers, dope to students and coke to the professionals. The profits were fantastic so to squabble over one batch of coke was just stupid. Tommy’s non-payment was seen by Stevenson and Tony as a deliberate act of provocation and neither was the type of person to back down. It was war but, in this particular conflict, one of the generals was to change sides in mid battle.

In the early summer of 1998, the opening salvo, however, was directed at Tommy after Tony and Stevenson were blamed for Tommy being run over by an ice-cream van and suffering leg injuries. Later that month when Tony was best man at Stevenson’s wedding, Tommy did not even get a bit of wedding cake, let alone an invitation.

Throughout that summer, police received intelligence of other minor skirmishes between the sides and, when they arrested Tommy for attempted murder, possession of firearms and perverting the course of justice, it neatly put a lid on the brotherly battle. His conviction also pleased the police for other reasons – they had been infuriated at the witness intimidation that had seen Tommy’s 1995 trial for murder collapse.

Tommy was sentenced to four years in prison at the High Court in Greenock for the various charges in March 1999, although the attempted murder charge had by then been reduced to assault. With Tommy out of the way, Tony and Stevenson could get on with business without distraction and were able to appease the Liverpool contact. Meanwhile, Tommy had time to plot his next move following his eventual release from his cell in the newly built private prison in Kilmarnock, Ayrshire.

It was during his time behind bars that the McGovern family intervened in the dispute. With so many genuine enemies, they could not afford to fight amongst themselves. Eldest brother Joe is credited with forcing Tony and Tommy to form a peace pact but Tommy could only accept this deal on one condition – Stevenson must be killed.

It will never be known when Tony made the conscious decision to sacrifice his best friend for the sake of peace with his brother, in effect signing his friend’s death warrant, but, by early 2000, the bonds of friendship had lost out to family loyalty. Blood was, after all, thicker than water.

For those in the police and the underworld tracking the feud, a High Court case in March 2000 revealed exactly how the McGoverns would use any means necessary to score points.

Joseph Carbin, a relative of Gerry Snr and Jnr, who stands at six foot four, was sentenced to nine years for a knife attack on five-foot-tall John Callaghan, a cousin of the second-division Lyons crime family. As Carbin, fuelled by alcohol and drugs, stood over his victim holding two razor-sharp boning knives above his head, he told Callaghan, ‘Your lungs are getting it.’ It was no idle threat. Carbin plunged the blades into Callaghan thirteen times, leaving him disabled. It was a miracle that Carbin was not facing a murder charge.

What seemed most relevant to those monitoring the feud between the McGoverns and Stevenson was that Callaghan co-operated with police and, had Carbin not pleaded guilty, he would have been willing to give evidence against him. It was widely held that the McGoverns sanctioned their associate Callaghan to do so. The reason? Stevenson was married to Gerry Carbin’s ex-wife and he had a good relationship with his stepson Gerry Jnr. This meant that Stevenson and Joseph Carbin were natural allies which, in turn, meant Carbin became an enemy of the McGoverns. Callaghan’s co-operation helped to land Carbin in jail for nine years.

It was strange that Callaghan would co-operate and the reason for that was because the McGoverns had sanctioned it because the feud with Stevenson had begun and this was a member of the Carbin family. Had this happened a year earlier, it would never have resulted in a conviction. It’s a trick that’s been used by various groups – they will encourage and protect other people to give evidence in order to put a rival away while they are not being personally seen as grasses.

The play in court was only one weapon in the gangland foes’ armoury, however, and there were far less subtle mechanisms for securing success. On the afternoon of Friday, 30 June, Tony McGovern was showering in his comfortable house in Bishopbriggs – the type of house that the pickpocket victims of his youth might have lived in – when someone walked in and shot him. The gunman, who had entered through the unlocked back door, fired at least twice, possibly three times, in the steamy tile-lined bathroom, shattering the glass shower cubicle door. At least one shot hit Tony before he ran, injured, naked and shouting, into the street.

The gangland figure was rushed to hospital but his injuries were not life threatening. Police were quick to suspect Stevenson. Tony refused to co-operate with detectives but forensic experts recovered some of the rounds used in the shooting. The ammunition was of poor quality. Investigators believed the bullets were home-made and had probably been fired from a converted replica firearm. The amateurish ammunition suggested that whoever shot Tony either lacked the contacts capable of supplying a better gun or was in a hurry and had grabbed whatever weapon was immediately at hand.

One newspaper the following day devoted fifty-six words to the incident but mistakenly reported that Tommy McGovern, rather than Tony, was the shooting victim who was recovering in hospital.

I got a call on the day after the shooting from a contact who supplied the full details about the fall-out between Stevenson and Tony. I reported this information to a detective inspector but he was not that interested. It was not until the following Monday morning when an assistant chief constable found out that it was taken seriously. The ACC realised that this was an ongoing vendetta which had the potential to become a lot more serious.

In the months that followed, there was more tit-for-tat violence. In the early hours of one Sunday in July, Cafe Cini in Greenock was torched. Just one year after its glitzy gangland opening, hundreds of people were having to flee from the McGovern-controlled style bar. All that remained as morning broke was a smouldering shell. Police warned staff to be prepared for similar attacks at other pubs in the Jimmy Nick’s chain. CCTV images showed the culprit to be a man who appeared to be of the same height and build as Stevenson but there was never enough evidence to make an arrest. The McGovern family did not require the same standard of proof – they knew who was behind the attack.

The escalating feud widened. Stevenson is devoted to his stepson Carbin who, at the time Tony was shot, was aged twenty-one. In the same year, a member of the McGovern crew brandished a gun in Stevenson’s stepson’s face at the Ashfield Club – the same venue in Possil where taxi driver Jimmy McHugh had been shot dead in 1995.

There was an incident at the Ashfield Club. There was allegedly a firearm present. It’s a matter that still has to be resolved. Police were called to an incident at the time but we don’t have an official complaint. I’m aware that the person involved is the stepson of Jamie Stevenson. As to whatever exactly happened, I don’t know. There were few witnesses. It’s amazing how many people can get into a pub toilet at one time.

By the time Tommy stepped through the prison gates to freedom on 9 August, he finally understood the consequences of his refusal to pay his Liverpudlian drug debt. His stunt had propelled his family into all-out war. The most crucial act in this long hot summer of spiralling violence happened just days before Tony was shot at while in the shower. Indeed, it had been the catalyst for the attack.

Just four weeks before Tommy headed back to Springburn, Stevenson was persuaded to go for a drive in the country. He was not meant to return.