The Iceman

‘Have you counted it yet? Why not? Well, gonnae do it right now? Every bundle. I want an exact figure. Is it all right where it is? That safe . . . is it big enough to hold all that?’

It was Friday, 26 May 2006 and Jamie Stevenson had a cash problem – he had too much to hide. He unwittingly shared his storage difficulty with the surveillance officers bugging his home but one detective said that the almost-daily collection of thousands of pounds in used notes was a logistical headache for the drugs gang.

Everyone talks about money laundering and all the ways the cash is whitened up but, way before it becomes a line buried in some company’s accounts or a digitised electronic transfer, drugs money is literally dirty – thousands and thousands of used notes, sometimes rolled into £5,000 bundles, sometimes just lying loose like confetti and stuffed into bags and cases. We’re not talking about a cheque that can be slipped into a top pocket. These guys get paid in cash money and lots of it. It’s big and it’s bulky. Every day, they face the problem of hiding it until they can get rid of it safely.

Stevenson could stay away from the drugs but he had to get close to the money. That was his Achilles heel and, in the end, that’s how we got him.

At the premises of one of Stevenson’s taxi firms, in the south-east of Glasgow, not far from his home, there was a large, reinforced-steel safe set into its foundations and, two days after that conversation, on the last Sunday in May, Stevenson headed there. He was tailed by undercover officers, who watched as he entered the building, talked with two associates and left twenty minutes later. The other two men left minutes after their boss.

The police already suspected the capacious under-floor safe was a regular hiding place for Stevenson’s dirty money on the way to the laundry. Months before, when Stevenson had discussed the size, security status and location of a large sum of money, they had been listening. They had heard him tell his associate, ‘No, it’s under the ground . . . in a safe under the ground.’

When the two men left Stevenson’s firm, they were followed by another surveillance team as they drove to a house five minutes away. The officers already knew it was the location for the stash of money because Stevenson had been heard discussing it two days earlier. His associates were only in the house a matter of minutes before they left, wheeling a very large and heavy suitcase behind them. Hefting it into the boot of their car, they drove off. They did not get far before police swooped. Inside the case, they found £389,035 in used notes. Stevenson would at least get an exact figure.

He was back home at Fishescoates Gardens when he took a telephone call fifteen minutes after the police bust. Hanging up, he told his wife, ‘Got taken out. Christ, we’ll need to go intae his house.’

Within minutes, he had driven back to the premises of his taxi firm but, after spotting surveillance teams on the ground, he did not stop. Hours later, he was gone – away from Glasgow and out of Scotland.

The Folklore tapes recorded his fears that the men caught with the money might talk and forge a deal where his arrest would be exchanged for their freedom. He was not prepared to take that chance. Like he had done after Tony McGovern was murdered, like he did whenever police attention seemed to be drawing uncomfortably close, Stevenson simply vanished.

Reaching for his passport, possibly his own or perhaps his counterfeit documents in the name of Jeremiah Dooley, Stevenson left for the airport.