I started to work out a plan to manage and ease the transition from London to Cardiff. I figured out that what I needed to do was get a large quantity of drugs that I could disappear with.
I contacted a big dealer I had used as a supplier on many occasions. I told him that I had some major deals in Scotland and elsewhere that I needed to fulfil, and asked him for a large amount of gear. As I had established a good reputation with him, he was prepared to give it to me on the understanding that he would be paid later. I went to his house, picked up the gear and hired a van; I couldn’t use my Jag because it had burst into flames at a service station on the M4 not long before. I had been driving one evening after dark, when I realised that I could smell petrol and noticed that the petrol gauge was going down alarmingly quickly. I pulled into a service station to see what was going on. I got out, went to the boot of the car and opened it up, but I couldn’t see anything, as it was so dark.
Clearly not thinking things through very cleverly, I decided to use my cigarette lighter to see what was going on. Of course, it ignited all the fuel that was lying in the boot, singing all my eyelashes and the front of my hair and sending flames high into the air. I started to panic. Not only was I on fire, but the boot was full of gear. I set about taking the gear out of the boot and putting it into the service station rubbish bin, together with a set of scales that I was also carrying. I ran to get assistance. Some of the service station staff put the Jag out with fire extinguishers! I hung around the service station until it was very late and everything had quietened down, and then went and retrieved the gear from the rubbish. I lifted the bonnet of the Jag and extracted some drugs from the air filter and the headlight covers, where I had stashed them. Chrisso, my mate from Cardiff, came to pick me and the car up.
Now without my Jag, I went back to London to pick up the belongings that I could carry and headed for Cardiff. I was welcomed in Cardiff because of the drugs that I was carrying; there was a big drugs scene in the city and there were always plenty of customers. I started my deliveries as soon as I got there, and stayed with some of the dealers.
Cardiff wasn’t far, but it was far enough, at least for a while. I cut off all contact with everyone I knew in London and went underground. I was successful enough in this aim that the police didn’t know whether I was alive or dead, and there was concern that I might also have been murdered by Johnnie, or else involved in Ricky’s death.
So far as I knew, Sparky was still dealing. I didn’t want to know about it. A few of my contacts did come looking for me in Cardiff, and turned up in a fancy car asking questions at Chrisso’s garage. Thankfully, after looking around a few times, they decided to let it go and I was left alone to get on with my life.
I had brought enough drugs with me to provide me with a basic standard of living, and I also raised a little money selling cars. Whereas in London I had lived the high life with a fancy car and expensive suits, here I released small amounts of drugs slowly into the local market, always on a very small scale, and gradually turned the money I made into a legitimate business buying and selling cars, while also doing the occasional ringer on the side; stealing a car, changing its identity and selling it on. In this way I managed to keep my head above water and pay the bills. I did not enjoy a lavish lifestyle; far from it, it fact. While I had spent a while thinking that I was something of a big shot, now I had to face the cold reality, which was that I was just a small-time dealer like so many others, and all the hard work I had put in didn’t amount to anything, after all.
I was lucky in that I had managed to make some friends in Cardiff and wasn’t moving into a completely alien environment. My mate Chrisso, in particular, was a life-saver. He took me under his wing and got involved with me in selling and repairing cars, mostly through legal channels. Chrisso would occasionally look the other way if something underhand was going on, but generally he liked things to be done properly and above board, because he was a serious person who didn’t like to muck anyone about.
Chrisso became concerned about what I was doing to myself – I was still using drugs very heavily – and tried to look after me. He occasionally took speed and was into smoking dope when he was having some down time, but he didn’t go crazy or take so many drugs that he lost control of himself. Chrisso was a cool, calm and collected sort of guy, and I admired the way he used to stay so mellow and not let the little things get him down. I tried to make myself calmer and mellower by switching from coke and speed to using downers like Tuinal and other prescription drugs that I got from my sideline of buying things from people who had broken into chemists, and stolen medication for sale on the black market. So far as I was concerned, this was a major concession to my health and I was being quite sensible.
Chrisso knew that I was never going to deal with an addiction by “treating” it with stolen prescription medication, so he tried to book me into a hospital in nearby Woodchurch to detox. But I wasn’t interested, because I didn’t think I was doing anything wrong. Although I was still selling coke and doing both speed and coke, I never suffered any repercussions to my physical health, or at least none that I was aware of at the time.
Of course, it wasn’t doing my mental health any favours, but such is the nature of the beast that I was totally in denial about that and would have become immensely angry if anyone had suggested that I had any psychological problems at all. When I got angry, I thought that I always had a good reason for it. I was totally in charge of everything, and to hell with anyone who thought otherwise. I felt as strong and healthy as ever and reasoned that that was good enough for me.
About eighteen months after my arrival in Cardiff, the police finally caught up with me. Because I hadn’t been claiming any benefits, it had been difficult for them to track me down. I had been put on the missing persons’ list. Johnnie was behind bars, but they were still investigating the ins and outs of Ricky’s murder and all the events that surrounded it.
In Carshalton, Nan was still living on her own, and because she was the relative I had always had the most to do with, the police thought that I would eventually turn up there. They spent hour after hour sitting outside her house waiting for me to arrive with a few quid for her, as I had always done before. I had maintained a slender line of contact with a few of my aunts and uncles in London and had been receiving increasingly irate messages from them. The situation with the police was causing my grandmother immense stress, and they told me to sort it out.
I set myself up with a solicitor in Cardiff and arranged a meeting with the police at Cardiff Police Headquarters, where I was cautioned and arrested for conspiracy to commit murder. They knew that Johnnie had stabbed me, and had heard that I had been seen making deliveries in Tooting and carrying a gun. Johnnie had told the coppers that he had stabbed me in self-defence, because I had been threatening to shoot him. This was nonsense, of course. Three days of intensive questioning followed, after which it was decided not to charge me. This was a great relief, not least because I knew that I was not to blame for Ricky’s untimely demise. In London, Nan moved in with Auntie Pat. She had become too frail to continue living on her own.
By this stage, Anne and I had developed a more serious relationship. We had always got along well, and now things moved up a notch and we became romantically involved. I moved in with Anne and her young daughter Catherine, then aged four. Catherine was a bright little girl and I became very fond of her. Catherine’s father wasn’t on the scene, so I decided that I would be like a father to her and make sure that she had everything she needed.
Our lives were chaotic in the extreme. I was still dealing, as was Anne, and I was also trying to work at legitimate business and keep the money coming in. We were both using heavily. Our relationship was quite turbulent and we often fell out over money and drugs. Despite our difficult relationship, Anne and I got married a couple of years later: my third marriage. We did the deed at Cardiff Register Office.
All of Anne’s family were there, and so were some of my best mates from the area. I liked Anne’s parents. Her dad, who had grown up in the Rhondda Valley, a mining area, was quite a hard man who had once had a garage and knew about cars, so we had an interest in common. The Rhondda is a tough place, and people who have grown up there are generally more than able to take care of themselves. Anne’s father had done well for himself financially, and the family was comfortably off. Anne’s mother was a pleasant, friendly woman. I was happy to be part of their family. They knew that Anne had a big problem with drugs and that I was also a user. Somehow they clung to the hope that together we would be able to overcome our addiction. Perhaps they thought that being married would help us both to sort ourselves out.
I can’t remember who the best man at the wedding was, but I know I had one, so I imagine it must have been one of the people I used to take drugs with. Following the ceremony, we had a reception back at our flat. We had a great time with our mates but the day ended in a row. Some people started skinning up and smoking dope in the flat and I was not happy about this – we argued about it, so our first night as a married couple ended on a sour note. Anne and I muddled through married life, but bearing in mind that we were both using and dealing, keeping our relationship up and running was challenging, to say the least.
As things were a lot better for me now, I began to reflect on my life so far. I was twenty-seven, still young, and I had many regrets. Christine was dead, and there was nothing I could do to repair the damage I had done to her.
I also felt guilty about the way I had treated Tony Spooner over the years. Tony had always been there for me, with work and support and advice, and I had thrown it all back in his face. I decided that I would go back to London and thank Tony for all that he had done for me, especially as I felt that my life was under control now and that things were on a more even keel. This was one occasion when I actually managed to follow something through. I travelled to Carshalton with Anne and found Tony, who was still living and working in the area. I explained that my life was much better now than it had been before and said, “Mate, I just wanted to thank you for all you did for me. You were a real support and I am sorry I didn’t treat you the way I should have.”
I think that Tony had realised how important he was to me, but he seemed embarrassed when I laid it out like that. “I didn’t do anything much,” he said. “Nothing more than anybody would have done.”
“You did, you know,” I said, “and I’ll never forget it.” But I didn’t bang on about it, because I could see that I was making him feel uncomfortable.
I am glad now that I got it together enough to actually thank Tony while there was still time, but the reality of the situation was that my life wasn’t nearly as organised and good as I thought. I had taken some baby steps towards sorting things out and attempting a recovery, but there was still a very long way to go, and I was still an immature young man.
After seeing Tony, I brought Anne and Catherine to meet Auntie Pat, but we just made a quick visit and left it at that. My feeling was that I was better off out of the family circle, and that they were better off without me, as well. Auntie Pat was kind. She took the visit as a sign that I was moving forward with my life and gave my hand an encouraging squeeze. I didn’t let on that I was still using drugs heavily, or that Anne had the same problems as I did.
While we were in London, I decided to take Anne to the St Helier Arms in Carshalton – my old stomping ground and a notorious place for villains and villainy – to prove my credentials. I wanted her to be impressed by how at ease I was with the tough men in my home area. One of the regulars, my former brother-in-law Gary, the hairdresser, had been convicted for murder along with a chap who had also done some work for Tony. These were typical of the clientele of this particular pub. This was a place where strangers were not welcomed. I don’t know whether Anne was impressed in the way I had hoped that she would be.
Back in Cardiff, Anne left me on many occasions and went back to live with her mum. But she always came back eventually. I went in and out of detox at Woodchurch Hospital, with Chrisso encouraging me to do what I could to give up taking drugs. My heart wasn’t in it. On one occasion when Anne left, I deliberately overdosed on Nembutal because I couldn’t stand living the life I was living, and in a rare moment of clarity, realised that I was fucking everything up. I decided that I would be better off dead than alive and that I would be doing everyone else a favour by ending it. I was found on the street and taken to University Hospital, Cardiff. The specialists thought I should see a psychiatrist and referred me to a Dr Callum, who worked at the same hospital.
After my failed attempt at suicide, Anne and I hooked up again, and after a while the inevitable happened: she got pregnant. The baby was planned, or at least not unplanned. We had decided not to use any birth control and just let nature take its course. I was very pleased when Anne told me that there was a baby on the way, because I hoped it would be the thing that would bring us both to our senses and I thought that being a father might help me acquire some stability.
In due course, Anne gave birth to our baby girl, whom we named Michelle. She had made quite a big effort to come off drugs during the pregnancy, and although she didn’t manage it, she did reduce her intake considerably. Thankfully, Michelle did not suffer any health consequences as a result of the drugs Anne took. She was perfect. I stayed at home to take care of Catherine while Michelle was being born. When I went into the hospital and the nurses put this tiny scrap of life into my arms, I was blown away: happy and scared at the same time. Catherine was very excited to be a big sister. I thought that I had a proper family at last.
My daughter was beautiful and I loved her, but I felt utterly overwhelmed by the responsibility of fatherhood, despite the fact that I was of an appropriate age to be taking it on. My track record in this area was very poor. I hadn’t seen my son Lee since he was a tiny baby; I had lost all contact with his mother and didn’t even know where he was. I had sworn to take care of Catherine as though she were my own and had ended up taking an overdose. I had come into her family and married her mother, but we fought a lot of the time and hardly offered Catherine a stable life.
At the same time, I was determined to do things properly now, and I told everyone that I was ready to settle down and be the father of a real family. I was now responsible for two children. Not having had a proper father when I was growing up, I wanted my two little girls to have a better childhood than I had, so I did what I thought was my best to take care of them while making little effort to curtail my drug-taking.
I thought that I was keeping most of the dealing away from our home, but the children often saw me out of my head and doing things like pursuing people down the road while I brandished a machete, uttering threats because they owed me money. Anne was also using drugs heavily, so between the two of us, we actually did an atrocious job of caring for our girls. At one stage, Catherine had to go into care briefly because we weren’t looking after her properly.
Catherine had been four when her mother and I got together, and even at that age she had become blasé about the police arriving and turning her mother’s house upside down. After Anne and I got married and the family grew, I made a big effort to turn people away from the door, so that at least the children wouldn’t have to know too much about what was going on. I should have realised that children always understand a lot more than they are given credit for.
When people knocked at the door and asked to buy drugs, I would stand there menacingly and say, “Fuck off. This is a family home. Don’t come to us; we’ll come to you.” This reduced the number of times the police came to call and turn the house over, but from Anne’s point of view, I made her much less independent than she had been before. Before we got together, she had made a reasonably good living selling drugs and hadn’t needed to rely on anyone else. By deciding unilaterally that we would clean up our act, I made her very dependent on me, both financially and emotionally. I thought that I was a knight in shining armour, that I was protecting her by taking all the risk. But she didn’t quite see it like that.
“I was doing fine before you came along,” she would say. “You don’t need to take care of me.”
“What kind of a mother are you?” I would retort, “if you can’t see that it’s not right having junkies calling at the door when the children are here?”
All this time, I was extremely dishonest with myself. The law had come to mean nothing to me, but at the same time I had a huge and overwhelming desire to be responsible – to do things properly and well. I wanted to be “normal”, but I didn’t understand what normal was, although I thought I did. I tried to create a normal environment for my family, but what I did was attempt to mimic something that I believed to be normal life for normal people. It never felt right for me. I wanted to be a good father, the father that I had never had, and I was always talking about it and trying to impress people by telling them what a great dad I was, while not seeing that I would never be a great dad so long as I was taking drugs.
When I had moved in with Anne, the first thing I did was decorate her whole apartment. I thought that this was a nice thing for a normal bloke to do, so I went through the motions and was very proud of the results. As the years passed, I often reminded everyone of what an effort I had gone to. I never got tired of telling people how much under control I had things and how strongly I felt about not letting people come to my home for their fix.
“I’m a serious businessman!” I would preach. “I don’t want this crap!” The fact that the business was illegal didn’t really come into my head at the time because my main focus was to make a pound and do what I thought I could to give my girls a good life. Alongside selling drugs, I worked in real jobs and, despite the fact that I was using heavily and consistently, I worked for British Steel for a number of years as a crane driver.
I worked nights, and quite enjoyed the job. I obtained my crane driver’s certificate. While crane driving, I was in charge of depositing sixty tonnes of molten metal from a huge shed into moulds around which people were working far below me. How I managed not to kill anyone, I do not know. I frequently went to work completely off my head on drugs and reached the end of the day with only hazy memories of what had gone on. Because I had spent most of my life off my head on drugs, it wasn’t obvious, or at least people didn’t seem to notice. On drugs or not, I enjoyed this job, especially because I was working alongside my mate Chrisso.
I also went to work at another foundry after leaving British Steel, again as a crane driver, where I did a similar job to the one before, but with smaller amounts of molten steel, which was probably just as well.
I liked the fact that I was working with colleagues who were normal men with normal lives who didn’t use drugs, and I wanted to be more like them. I was still fixing heroin, but increasingly aware that I never seemed to be able to get my mind into a stable place. I just wanted to get more in touch with reality, so I finally did something I had not considered before: I went to Dr Callum and asked to be put on a methadone script. This was a very big step for me, and the first time that I had even come close to admitting that there was a problem. I have to admit that methadone did stabilise my life, but only because it made me take illegal drugs less often.
Methadone is a substitute for heroin, the main difference being that it is acquired legally. And while it didn’t feel the same as taking heroin, it did dampen my urge to use drugs and helped me to stay in control of things. As I had a responsible and rather dangerous job, I did not tell my employers that I was on a methadone script, reasoning that what they didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them. And, to be fair, I was doing a good job at work anyway.
Today methadone is given in liquid form, but in those days it was provided as tablets, which I used to crush and draw up through a filter into a syringe and into a vein, rather than taking them orally as I was supposed to. This is a trick that every addict knew and that most engaged in whenever possible. Liquid methadone is very bad for the teeth and today’s addicts typically have awful teeth. Fixing methadone this way, however, had the side effect of filling one’s arteries with chalk, so I guess it’s six of one and half a dozen of the other.
Anne was more into illegally acquired Valium and speed than heroin, and saw no need to get herself put onto a script. She made some attempts to sort herself out, but it can’t have been easy, considering that she was living with me, and that I made no bones about fixing up in the kitchen or the living room. For me, the biggest difference between taking methadone and taking illegal drugs was the fact that I was getting it for free and I didn’t have to hang around on unsavoury street corners sorting myself out with a dose.
I continued seeing Dr Callum, the psychiatrist I’d met after my suicide attempt. He was a good bloke who looked after me very well within the constraints of the public health system. He tried a lot of approaches to help me get off drugs. He reduced my prescription, but that didn’t help at all. He tried hypnotherapy, but was not able to get me to go under, because I was never able to relax enough to relinquish even a little control. Now and again I was arrested on a public disorder charge and would come off the drugs for the couple of days I was in custody, but I was usually back on them five minutes after being released.
Eventually, Dr Callum was left with no apparent option but to maintain me on enough methadone to keep me under control. Most people went to the hospital or clinic once a week to pick up their prescription. I would go on a Thursday, but I was invariably back by the Monday and I’d pick up the same script that I got on Thursday, which meant that I was getting double what I was supposed to.
Dr Callum knew that my prescription would never last a week. I always told him a lie of one sort or another; that someone had stolen my drugs, or whatever. He knew I was lying, and we developed a gentleman’s agreement whereby he would leave a fresh prescription for me with his secretary so that I could get an extra dose before the requisite week was up. Although I was using methadone heavily, my life stabilised a lot and I was able to work steadily – which at least meant that I was able to provide for my family.
At one stage I did some industrial painting, which involved painting things like pylons and big chimneys. It was horrendously dangerous, because I was invariably out of my head, swaying about hundreds of feet above the ground. Still, somehow I was always OK and always made it back home again in one piece. Not only that, but I was good at the work and got along pretty well there.
After a while, Anne also stabilised somewhat with the help of legal drugs. She was not on methadone but, I believe, a combination of Valium and antidepressants. These helped her out and made her life a bit less chaotic. But she frequently topped up with illegal drugs because, for whatever reason, she did not feel ready to try to live without that crutch. I didn’t need to top up; I was OK with what I had. We would have arguments, sometimes, when Anne dipped into my methadone because she felt that her medications weren’t enough for her.
“Stop being so fucking selfish,” she would yell. “You’re no better than I am; if you were you wouldn’t be on the methadone in the first place. And we’re a couple. We’re supposed to share everything. So just fucking well give me some, OK?”
“At least I am trying to stay in control of it,” I would say. “You’re a fucking disgrace.”
All of our arguments were about drugs or money, and as time passed, we argued more and more frequently. We often neglected to protect the children from these rows, and they had to see and listen to far too many of them. As they got older, Catherine became something of a mother figure to Michelle, at an age when she should still have been playing with her Barbies. She had to cook the dinners and wash the clothes and keep the house under control.
I was a bad friend, too. Chrisso had given me so much and I did nothing to repay him. One day I was driving his twelve-year-old daughter somewhere and stopped the car and left her there while I went into an acquaintance’s house to shoot up.
One problem with being on a drug script is that you are very tied down, because you can never go anywhere; you have to stay near the person who is supplying you with the script. If you are taking illegal drugs you have more choice about where you go and what you do because there is always someone who will sell them to you. I began to feel stuck in Cardiff – not that there was anything wrong with it; I just didn’t like the feeling that I didn’t have any say in the matter.
Inevitably, Anne and I split up.
I received my divorce papers from Anne, citing my unreasonable behaviour, when I was serving a sentence in Cardiff Prison for assaulting three police officers. This, of course, was something that I had done one day when I was off my head on drugs. I got fifteen months, but this was reduced on appeal to nine, as at the time of the arrest I was actually in Woodchurch Hospital, where I was trying to get myself into a safe haven because I had lost it due to alcohol and drugs.
The news was broken to me by my probation officer. When he told me what was about to happen, I went completely mad. I lost control and started to throw myself about and make a scene.
“Calm down, mate,” he said. “What’s the problem? It’s only a piece of paper. You’re not any different now from how you were before you got it.”
This attempt to comfort me made it even worse. “What do you mean, it’s only a piece of paper?” I screamed. I had pinned all my hopes for the future on the idea of my becoming a normal, respectable husband and father and now that had all gone down the toilet.
Anne went through with the divorce, bringing my third marriage to a miserable end and leaving two little girls without a father in the house. I felt like shit. I took an overdose in a half-assed attempt at suicide. I honestly did not want to live any more, or I thought I didn’t. I had taken a long, hard look at myself and had realised that I did not like what I saw.
“Look at me,” I thought. “I’m pushing thirty and I’ve achieved fuck-all with my life. I’m a fucking joke.”
I couldn’t understand how things had worked out so badly for me, or why I couldn’t stop making all the wrong decisions about every bloody thing. Anything good I had ever done or tried to do had melted and disappeared. I had tried to earn some real money and had ended up living like a dog. I had tried to be a good father and had ended up thrown out of the relationship and abandoning my daughters, leaving them with a junkie for a mother, who couldn’t and didn’t take care of them as they deserved. I had lied to everyone who had ever cared for me. I had basically cheated my way through life. I didn’t like the fact that I knew I was capable of violence. There had been times when I had been walking down the street and a great, hot rage had started to build in me until I felt as though I was going to explode. I had been arrested on a number of occasions for deliberately barging into police officers with every intention of hurting them – just because I hated them – culminating in an arrest for assault. I couldn’t even explain why I hated the coppers, because I knew on some level that they were just ordinary blokes trying to do a job. I think that maybe, in my head, they represented the authority figures who I felt had always let me down.
Gradually, I became able to think about the divorce more rationally and to realise that yes, the divorce decree was just a piece of paper. It was the end of our marriage, but that didn’t mean that Anne and I could not be friends, or that my life was really going to be all that different from before. With time, Anne and I became friends, and we were better at friendship than we had ever been as husband and wife.
In the end, I actually supported Anne when she went to the court office to organise the divorce! This was progress of some sort. In previous relationships, I had never been able to accept it when they ended. At least now I was able to accept Anne’s decision and I became quite philosophical about it. I remember telling Anne that the divorce didn’t mean much. If we wanted to be together we could be, divorced or not. And if we didn’t, then it just wasn’t meant to be.