At the height of my career as a dealer, Holland was a source of a lot of the drugs that were coming into England, so it was important to have good contacts there – and I certainly did. While I wasn’t at the top of the drugs trade, I was one of a small number of people responsible for bringing all sorts of illicit substances back to Britain and I had acquired some pretty impressive business skills along the way.
The men who occupied the niche above mine were very professional about their dealing. The goods they sold were top notch, 90% pure, and as a result they had a very good reputation; a reputation that they guarded at all costs. They were also known in the business as serious men; people you shouldn’t or couldn’t cross, because they would do just about anything to take care of their own interests.
Johnnie, who was the main supplier of our group, was known in particular for flying off the handle if money was delivered to him late. He had an obsession with the notion that people were trying to make a fool of him, and whenever he suspected that he was being taken for a ride, he acted like a man possessed. I had a bit of a reputation too; as a matter of fact, at this time my nickname was “Psycho”.
One night, I was out with Johnnie and a few others in Crystal Palace. One of Johnnie’s contacts lived nearby in an apartment on the top floor of a four-storey building. Johnnie was furious with him, because he was overdue with a payment. He fumed about it all night. Finally, he had a plan: “I’m going to set fire to the building and kill the lot of ’em; that’ll show them not to stiff me for money.”
“Hang on, Johnnie,” I’d said. “There are other people in the building too; you know, people who have nothing to do with you.”
“Who the fuck cares?”
It was clear that he didn’t care at all, but following our conversation, at least, he decided not to burn the building down.
When Johnnie handed out the goods, he was one of the ones who liked to ask, “Are you leaving me an arm or a leg as a deposit?” Nobody laughed, because Johnnie wasn’t joking or exaggerating. If you were overdue with a payment, he might very well turn up and cut off a body part, or maybe two, just to show who was boss. It was rumoured that he had already done exactly that, and more than once.
Because the business that we were involved with was very much illegal, cultivating a close network of contacts was extremely important, and it was sometimes necessary to travel, if not to Amsterdam, then elsewhere. As I became a bigger and bigger player in the trade, I found myself travelling more and more frequently. This in turn meant that I couldn’t always be in direct control of what was going on at home, I had to trust my partners and colleagues to cover for me while I was away – and this would soon prove to be a very big problem.
“So,” I said to Ricky as I readied myself for my latest trip to Amsterdam, “I’m leaving you to hold the fort. You’re up for it, aren’t you, mate?”
I was looking forward to the trip. It was about business, of course, but I was also travelling with Judy, one of the girls I was seeing at the time, and I was looking forward to spending some time with her, too. Judy and I didn’t have anything serious going on between us, but she was a good-looking bit of stuff, she was fun, and I was quite fond of her. That was about as far as I was prepared to go with any woman, having been burned more times than I cared to think about.
“No problem,” said Ricky. “I’m on top of it.”
“Don’t forget the –”
“Yeah, the delivery in Battersea. Don’t worry. I’ve got everything under control. You just go and have your fun.”
“Take my car and do the exchange from that.”
“OK, mate. That’s not a problem.”
Ricky and I had been working together for a while now. We were friends as well as partners, and I liked him. But I didn’t realise that Ricky’s sense of self-preservation was even less well developed than my own, or that his drug problem was such that he’d begun to lose his grip on reality and forgotten how to assess risk properly – bearing in mind who we were working for.
And I should have known better than to trust Ricky to deal with things while I was away, because we could all see that his behaviour was becoming increasingly erratic. Often, even when we were selling drugs, Ricky would drift off and start fiddling with the other people’s safe, trying to get it open or in other ways making us look foolish while we were trying to conduct our business in a serious manner. I knew, but Johnnie didn’t, that Ricky was also seeing Johnnie’s wife behind his back, which was a seriously bad idea. I didn’t realise, however, just how far Ricky was deviating from our business plan. He was out of control.
While I was enjoying Amsterdam with Judy and making useful contacts, Ricky had decided to up the profit factor at home by taking the drugs that we had got from some of the most serious suppliers in the business – the men who provided me with the top-of-the-range drugs that I sold – and cutting them down with glucose until they were only 25% proof.
Our suppliers and, by extension, Ricky and I, were known for providing only very high-quality produce, and our business reputation was based on the fact that the men and women who used our drugs knew that they were getting really good stuff. Once word got out that the goods were actually crap (and that sort of news spread very quickly in our world), it would reflect badly on the guys at the top of the supply chain. It would damage their business and make them lose face. When Ricky hit the streets with the inferior drugs, Johnnie and his pals had lost face. And these were men who were serious in more ways than one.
I was in a good mood when I got back from Amsterdam. It was always good to get away, and the trip had gone well. Judy and I had both had a lot of fun. At home in London, I went back to Ricky’s place in Croydon, threw my bag on the floor, opened a beer and started to unwind. Ricky was already there, and we chilled out and started to chat. Ricky told me that business had been going well and that he’d made all the deliveries he was supposed to. He didn’t mention that he’d been doctoring the goods and keeping the additional profits for himself.
We finished our beers and decided to shoot up some speed. As always, it felt good, and as the effects kicked in, I didn’t have a care in the world. I was clearing three or four grand a week, I was young and handsome, I’d just had some time in Amsterdam with my bird and life was sweet. I felt that I had everything sorted out and that I could continue going my merry way through life with plenty of money in my pocket and no shortage of attractive female company.
Then all hell broke loose. Two men, armed with a club hammer and a knife, burst in the door, red-faced and furious.
“We’ll be fucking having you,” one of them screamed. “You’re fucking goners!”
It was Johnnie and his brother-in-law, and I had never seen two angrier men.
“What the fuck?” I shouted as I leapt from my chair. “What the hell is going on here?”
Johnnie charged at me like a mad bull, waving the club hammer above his head and roaring. The beer that I’d been balancing on my lap fell onto the floor, spilling everywhere.
“Try to cheat me, you bastard? I’ll fucking show you who’s in charge around here!”
Johnnie set to with the club hammer as I held my hands over my face. His brother-in-law wielded his knife wildly, the blade flashing in the electric light. Somehow, Ricky saw a moment of opportunity and fled down the stairs and into the night, leaving me to fend off the attackers as best I could on my own.
In the ensuing bust-up, I ended up with a flesh wound when I was stabbed in my arm and left shoulder. Johnnie had beaten me around the head with the club hammer, splitting it open. Thick, sticky blood was pouring down my face and making it difficult for me to see what was going on. Despite all this, I managed to get out the open door and run away by blundering through all the back gardens, along the terraced row of houses, knocking over flowerpots and clean laundry and sending the neighbourhood cats screeching in all directions as I went. I didn’t stop for a moment to consider how badly injured I was. Fear, adrenaline and the speed that I had shot up shortly before the attack lent the whole scene an air of unreality, and I was acting on sheer instinct.
Finally, I found myself in a garden facing a pair of glass patio doors. I jumped straight through the glass and stood inside the house, blinking stupidly in the light. Blood was pouring from my head and arms and pooling on the lino beneath my feet. I could feel that there were still bits of glass embedded in my flesh and that I was now also bleeding from other multiple wounds.
On some level, I was aware of being in pain, but it didn’t bother me particularly. I was much more concerned about getting out of there and getting some distance between me and Johnnie and his gorilla of a brother-in-law.
I knew later that the speed had saved me; if I hadn’t been hyped up and fearless because of the drug, I would never have been able to make my escape and they’d have killed me, there and then.
Then again, the speed and all the other drugs I took on a regular basis had also been responsible for getting me into this mess in the first place.
I took a moment to calm down, let myself out the front door and made my way to the hospital to be patched up. While I’d never been the victim of such a serious attack before, going to hospital to have wounds sewn up had become a regular routine for me over the years. Because it was clear that I had been viciously attacked and that I was drugged up to my eyeballs, once I got into hospital, the doctors called the police to interview me. My life wouldn’t have been worth anything if I had identified my attackers so, of course, I said nothing. I waited until the attention of the police and the hospital staff was elsewhere and then slipped out. They were obviously going to be looking for the people who had done this to me and no way was I going to tell them who they were because that would be tantamount to signing my own death warrant.
I wasn’t feeling great; I was still high, my wounds were hurting, and the fact that I was in a very dangerous situation was beginning to sink in. I had no idea where I was going because my head was all over the place. I couldn’t remember the way home, or recognise the area I was in, and passers-by were understandably reluctant to give directions to a man covered in blood, who had just been sewn together and was clearly off his head on drugs. It was difficult to find my way back, but eventually I arrived home at my flat in Tooting.
In the relative safety of home, I began to straighten up. As my head cleared, I realised just how perilous my situation was. I couldn’t relax; I kept wondering how long it would be before my door was kicked in to reveal an armed-to-the-teeth Johnnie, ready to kill. I rang some friends and acquaintances and found out that Ricky was OK. When I tracked him down, he was fine, just a little shaken up. He explained what had happened and why my suppliers were so angry.
“What the fuck did you do that for?” I screamed. “You could have had us both killed. And that’s not fucking all… as soon as trouble shows up, you clear off and leave me to deal with it on my own. Look at me: I’m in bits. They could’ve killed me; they still might. And you just… you just…”
This was fucking terrible. This was seriously bad news. I knew that it was time I started to think very hard about what I was going to do next. Ricky didn’t seem to be as worried as I was, but I was sure that our lives were both in peril.
I didn’t have to think for long. A couple of days later, the phone rang. I picked it up.
“Hello?”
“It’s me.”
It was Johnnie; he didn’t need to identify himself. We both knew that I’d been waiting for his call since he’d set about me with the club hammer.
“What the fuck do you want?”
“I need to see you. Get yourself round to my place, pronto.”
“You’re fucking joking. A couple of days ago you and your brother-in-law tried to kill me with a hammer and knife and now you want me to come and see you. Do I look like I’m stupid?”
“I want to talk to you and you know there’s plenty to talk about.”
“You can talk to me over the phone, can’t you?”
“I don’t want to talk to you on the phone; I want to see you. Get your act together and come over here.”
It took me a while to pluck up my courage, but somehow I managed it and went over to Johnnie’s place. All the way over there, I had no idea what I would be walking into. My life flashed before my eyes; I wasn’t sure I would see tomorrow. But doing what Johnnie told me seemed to be the best of a bad lot of choices.
Johnnie opened the door with a grim expression on his face and showed me in. I was fucking worried.
“So?” I asked with a pathetic show of bravado. “What’s this all about?”
But before he had time to answer, I saw Judy sitting in a corner of the room, wide-eyed and terrified. She had been there for several days. She had not been harmed in any way, but nor had she been allowed to leave. She had been questioned over and over again until Johnnie and his friends knew exactly what had happened and who had been responsible for putting shoddy drugs out on the street.
The message Johnnie was giving was loud and clear: I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to keep on top of my empire – even hurt a girl. I tried to look at Judy reassuringly and then turned back to Johnnie.
“If one of us is going to go down, Ricky or me,” I thought. “It’s not gonna be me.”
“What’s the score?” I asked. “I don’t know what the issue is here; I don’t know why you’ve got a problem with me. We’ve always got on fine until now.”
I knew all about what Ricky had done, but I wasn’t about to let on. I needed to be sure that Johnnie was convinced of my innocence.
“The gear that was sold in Battersea – that you got from me – was cut really badly. It was fucking useless. We never let our stuff out on the street in that sort of condition. I’ve had everyone coming back to me complaining about it and I can’t afford to deal with this sort of problem. I’ve got a business to run and a reputation to take care of here.”
“Hang on, mate,” I protested. “That’s got nothing to do with me. I didn’t do the deal. I couldn’t have; I was in Holland at the time.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I know that now. It’s the only reason you’re still alive. You can thank her for that.”
Johnnie gestured towards Judy. She gave me a wan smile, probably more to reassure herself that things were OK than to give any particular message to me.
Now that Johnnie knew that I wasn’t the one responsible for the problem, he didn’t have a problem with me any more. He even offered me a cup of tea: “You’re off the hook, Steve. I know you’re OK.”
“Your mate Ricky, though,” he said. “He’s the one with the problem. How dare he mug me off? No one gets one over on me. I’m going to teach him a lesson once and for all. I’m going to kill him, make him sorry he was ever born.”
I didn’t believe it, and I said so.
“I’m not joking,” Johnnie said. “He’s in for it for more reasons than one. He’s been fucking my wife and he’s been cutting my drugs badly. You think I’m the one you should be scared of, but I’ve got people to answer to as well, and the word from the man at the top is that he wants a body. He wants to show everyone who’s boss. Well, there’s no way that body’s going to be mine, so I’ve got to come up with the goods. When we went looking for you and Ricky a few days ago, that’s what we were doing – going to get a body. The good news for you is that we don’t want you as a body any more. We want him. And we’re going to get him.”
I looked straight into Johnnie’s eyes and felt chilled. His irises were enormous and, on this occasion, I felt that it was because of the enormous rage that was possessing him and not because of whatever drugs he might or might not have been on. I had often heard people mouthing off, saying that they were going to kill this person or that person. For the first time, I knew that I was listening to someone who really meant it.
I went straight into self-preservation mode and got out of there as soon as I could. I knew that Johnnie meant it when he said he would kill Ricky, but would it really happen? Maybe Ricky would manage to get away. All I could think about in that moment was keeping myself safe.
Back at my flat, I paced up and down. I didn’t want this. I wanted out. I wanted to get away. I considered my options. I was well known in Wales, among other places. In Cardiff, I had a fantastic reputation. Everyone knew that I could get my hands on virtually any type of drug I wanted. I had friends there. Chrisso in particular had always been a good mate. I was fond of Anne, who remained one of the main dealers I supplied. She was pretty messed up, but she had a big heart and I really liked her.
I decided to get a big consignment of drugs, go to Cardiff and disappear. That would give me a nest-egg to start my new life, and the chance to hide out, away from anyone who might want to hurt me. And that was it: I left London, moved to Cardiff and never moved back.
A few days later, I picked up the newspaper to read that Ricky had been murdered; that his was the body that was being thrown to the men at the top. It was a horrible death, too; no nice, clean bullet to the temple. Ricky was killed with a dog choker lead, decapitated, and piled into the boot of Johnnie’s car. Johnnie had used this as an opportunity to go around town and lift the lid of his boot to show all the other dealers around Tooting what would happen to them if they ever stepped out of line.
Fortunately for the rest of the dealers, the coppers picked Johnnie up about a week later when they made an inspection of the car and found poor Ricky’s remains, still heaped up in the boot and starting to go off.
Johnnie put his hand up to doing the murder straight away. According to what I heard, he seemed almost proud of what actually happened and told anyone who would listen that he had no regrets. It was an easy trial, and Johnnie was sent away to serve time for the murder of his one-time colleague.
For me, Cardiff was sufficiently far away that I was safe there, especially with Johnnie behind bars. No more flashy car and clothes for me. I was determined to keep my head down and stay out of trouble.
I didn’t want to end up like Ricky.