The Devil

Every drug dealer in Britain expected Curtis to get at least 20 years. After all, he was the perpetrator of the biggest cocaine haul in history, according to the prosecution. But the jammy twat walked – on a fucking technicality. The prosecution case fell apart over the shady goings-on of the informer Brian Charrington. On the steps of the court, Curtis allegedly turned to the Customs officers who had worked for years to nail him and said, ‘I’m off to spend the £70 million I made off the first consignment.’ His nickname was ‘Cocky’, by the way. I was truly made up for him, but I still thought that I’d had a lucky escape. The key point was that I had seen the writing on the wall and had got out just in time. Even though he’d got lucky with this case, I knew that it was only a matter of time before they rammed it up him again.

In the meantime, Whacker had to go on the run to Holland and Germany. Before long, he’d sourced a cheap and plentiful supplier of weed. This coincided with me setting up shop for a while in a very rich and exclusive part of Europe, where cannabis was a rarity. I got him to buy 100 kilograms. I paid £700 a kilo in Amsterdam and sold it for £2,000 a kilo in this European country – £1,300 profit on a kilo.

The only problem was that for the next load we didn’t have any transport back from Holland. Once again, I was cajoled into going to a recently freed Curtis to see if he could help – although I hated asking him for anything.

Every king loves to bestow favours to his underlings. I could see the power trip he was on: ‘Yeah, Frenchie. You’re back at my fucking table again, mate. I’ve got to sort your problems out again.’ Picture the scene: we were looking at each other and playing a mind game – continual and unspoken – that we both knew was there. On the surface, I was happy to pay lip service to him, but, deep down, the gratitude was a burden.

He scribbled down an address in Germany, close to the border with Holland, and said, ‘Have your weed delivered to that address by 4 p.m. tomorrow and you’ll have it over here in two days’ time.’

Sure enough, our parcel was smuggled into a busy port in a container of motorbikes. Curtis’s men then unloaded it into a van and parked it in a pre-arranged place. Later on, when I was given the keys, I summoned one of my £500-a-day men to go and pick up the van.

He replied, ‘What is it, weed? Yeah, I’ll go and do it.’ This was because nine times out of ten there was nobody watching. Also, if he got nicked, I’d give him a grand and his family would get looked after while he was inside.

These £500-a-day men have super spider senses, and they have a good look around before they open the van. They know how fucking hard it is to hide a full surveillance team, so they’re often able to pick up on anything suspicious.

Anyway, the van was collected with the cannabis inside. The first thing I did was make sure everything was there. Whacker, the bloke in Amsterdam, had put it in the container, having wrapped it and given it a particular seal. Each crew has a different seal, and that is how you can tell where certain drugs have come from. Next was the weighing. I always made sure that I was personally present at the weigh-in. However, instead of 100 kilograms of weed there was only 95. That missing weed was worth ten grand of my cash, which equated to a new car and a holiday.

Somewhere along the line, someone had stuck down on us, just as used to happen after a robbery. Up until then, there had been trust and camaraderie between us. Nevertheless, this kind of underworld camaraderie is like Scotch mist. When it suits, it’s there, and when it doesn’t, it’s not.

I had to make a call to Curtis to suss out what had happened to the missing weed. I’m a great believer in contractual law and ironing everything out at the beginning of a deal. So, in my mind, now that it had gone wrong, he owed me ten grand or five kilograms, because from the beginning I’d made a verbal agreement with him. However, if you ever started talking to Curtis on the phone about drugs, he’d just hang up on you, so we arranged to meet up.

Although I was doing business all over Europe, I regularly commuted back to Liverpool. At that time, there was a big gang war going on in the city. This meant that we couldn’t meet in our usual haunts, as people were getting shot left, right and centre, so we met in the park. I told him the situation and said, ‘Well, you know, you either give me five kilograms of bush or ten grand.’

Although the transport was a favour, he was still charging us the going rate – 100 times £250. That was 25 grand for the delivery. The way I figured it, even if he had to pay us off from his end, he’d still have been up by 15 grand. This was part of his day-to-day business. It was what he was into, what he did best. Not only was he an international trafficker, he was also renting out his transport. He had transport all the way from Colombia, or so the rumour went. He supposedly had lorries full of cocaine in England circling the motorways all day.

The ten grand didn’t really matter. It was just that I didn’t want him to get one over on me. However, I could afford to wait for Curtis to give it to me. In the meantime, I paid off my partners Rock Star and Whacker, who were in on the deal.

Most drug dealers live from hand to mouth. Take my partner Rock Star, for example. One minute, he’d be driving the best car and so would his bird, and the next he wouldn’t even have a pint of milk in the fridge. It was all fast money, so it was spent just as fast.

Eventually, I set up my own transport network, and we carried on shipping weed over from Holland by the tonne. Business was booming, but the ten grand thing kept nagging me. A perceived slight can distort your mind and send you crazy. When I was in Pentonville, Ski Gold yoghurts were a luxury. One day, a top drugs baron did me out of two of these yoghurts. In revenge, I decided to murder him. I spent a month plotting and planning his death, like it was a military operation – all because I was thinking, ‘Does he think I’m a prick?’ After he stole my Ski Gold yoghurts, I had my eye on the fucker. Now I was having similarly dark thoughts about Curtis.

The funny thing was, my wife used to work at Granada TV, based at the Albert Dock, right next to where Curtis had his docklands ken. Every morning when I was back in Liverpool, I’d take her to work at 8.30 a.m. and without fail I’d see Curtis leaving the Albert Dock. We’d give each other a wave and smile through gritted teeth. I’d give him a wave, whilst saying to Dionne under my breath, ‘That fucking cunt again.’ But, if truth be known, I could not help but like and admire him. He’d also wave, probably thinking that I was a cunt, too. He always looked at me in a nervous, suspicious way in case I was coming to the Albert Dock to do something to him. Curtis was always very aware that he could be kidnapped, tortured and robbed at any time – when all I ever wanted was to be on his firm.

One time, I bumped into him and said, ‘If you’re not going to give me my money, I’m going to get it by any which way, because nobody keeps the Frenchman’s money.’ If you owed me, you paid me. If you didn’t pay me, you’d see me. At the end of the day, there was nothing that would stop me, short of a .45 in the head.

As well as this little niggle, I also had another nagging thought at the back of my head. All the time, I was thinking that I was better than this. I knew I could make money legitimately. Inherently, I knew I was worth more than picking drugs up from A, carrying them to B and selling them for X plus Y. All the while, I was questioning my self-worth. Whatever had happened to the world champ? I wasn’t doing anything about it, but deep down I knew my current lifestyle was a dead end to nowhere. I didn’t find it challenging. The treachery and betrayal had become a headache.

I also found the constant intrusion of the Old Bill disturbing. They regularly pushed my wife around when I wasn’t there, and there was nothing I could do about it. When the harassment reached breaking point, I seriously considered taking a policeman out. I actually thought about saying to Merseyside Constabulary, ‘Well, OK, let’s go to war, shall we?’ and then assassinating a copper.