CALVIN HALL
I WAS in the bathroom getting ready for a night out when my doorbell rang. It was Thursday, June 25, 1998. Can you remember what you were doing on that date? I can. I wish I couldn’t.
Five minutes earlier, I’d been thinking how well things were going. I was midway through a successful summer’s betting and well on top of the heavy workload that involved. When the doorbell rang I assumed it was my ride into town, and called “Taxi?” out of the bathroom window. A stocky man I didn’t recognise came into view and, in a tone loaded with aggression, said: “No.”
I was still damp from the shower, but threw my clothes on and went downstairs. When I opened the door, there was a second man on the doorstep, a man I recognised as Calvin Hall. “You know me, Patrick, and this is my associate,” Hall said. “We’d like to come in.”
He meant that he was coming in. The use of the word ‘associate’, coming from two men on my doorstep, seemed chosen to mirror a famous scene in the film Pulp Fiction, a scene that was very bad news for those receiving the visit. The tone was menacing and, as both men were very heavily built, I wasn’t in any position to argue.
I was immediately alarmed. Having already had the misfortune to be introduced to Hall, I had been warned that he had a terrible reputation locally. He exuded menace and was known to be the chief suspect in what was described as the gangland-style execution of a nightclub bouncer in Cambridge. Now he was standing in my hallway, giving me a threatening look, next to an equally dangerous-looking accomplice. Both men looked bulked up by steroid use, both men were considerably larger than me. This was serious.
“You never returned my business plan and have cost me a lot of money,” said Hall. “I didn’t know you wanted it back,” I replied, sounding a lot calmer than I felt. My heart was pounding. A few weeks earlier, an acquaintance had passed on an absurd five-page business plan, written in poor English. His accusation was ridiculous given that I hadn’t been asked to return the plan, but it was obvious that this was merely an excuse to enable Hall to make demands.
”With what you have cost me, I need to be compensated,” said Hall, ignoring my reply. He reached into his pocket and pulled out three plain white envelopes. “Pick one of these,” he demanded.
“What is all this?” I replied. My pulse was still racing and now my palms were sweaty and my shirt felt hot and wet rather than damp. The fact that Hall seemed to be introducing a bizarre element of chance to the situation only served to create the impression that he might be unhinged as well as dangerous.
“Pick one of the envelopes,” he snarled. I chose an envelope and was told to turn it over. ‘£70K’ had been typed on the back. Heaven knows what had been typed on the other envelopes; I didn’t want to think about it.
“That’s the compensation you’re going to pay me for costing me this deal,” Hall said. “In the envelope are some bank account details. You are going to transfer that amount of money into that account tomorrow.” His ‘associate’ then spoke for the first time: “Otherwise I’ll come back tomorrow and break your legs.” After a short pause, he added: “Or cut them off.”
“I don’t have that sort of money,” I said. Now, I was petrified, but there was no chance of me handing over such a sum when I’d done nothing wrong. “You can get it,” Hall’s associate replied. Hall pushed his finger into my face and added: “You know what you’ve been told. It’s to be done tomorrow.” He reached over to grab the keys to my Mercedes from the shelf, adding: “I’m taking the car until the money’s paid, just to make sure.”
The two men turned and left, closing the door quietly behind them. The episode that would turn my life upside down had lasted less than five minutes. How had I become embroiled in this terrifying situation? Not through any fault of my own, that was for sure. Hall was clearly a highly dangerous figure and, despite the gambling industry having a colourful reputation, I’d never met anyone like him. I still lived on the university side of Cambridge, having stayed on after my three years there. The suburb of Newnham was leafy and peaceful, not in any way renowned for trouble. The first I’d heard of Hall was when an acquaintance, Jerome Davies, approached me at the gym one day. “An acquaintance of mine has a business proposition for you,” he said. “I’ll have his business plan sent round.”
Davies and I shared a few friends and had sometimes been in the same group having a drink in the bar adjoining the gym, but I’d never really warmed to him. He was a talker, the sort of person who would frequently suggest that the next round was his although rarely actually buying one, so I’d given very little thought to what he had said. The business plan arrived a few days later. It was about five pages long, cheaply bound with a plastic clip. It contained supposed plans to open a complex of bars, restaurants, a nightclub and casino on a disused site in Cambridge. Such a scheme would have required a business plan of hundreds of pages. The proposal was badly written and ignored the reality that legislation at the time made it impossible to even apply for a casino licence in Cambridge.
The plan’s marketing strategy was one poorly-written sentence long: “MARKETING: We will pay celebrities to visit our premises, hence making them more attractive to paying customers.” I’d thrown the plan in the bin and thought nothing more of it.
A few days later, I received a call from a friend, Simon Hellowell, who sounded quite distressed. “Jerome Davies has been in touch with you, hasn’t he?” he said. “He asked me for your number. Whatever you do, don’t get involved. Calvin Hall is very, very bad news. Did you ever hear about a nightclub bouncer called Adam Fraser who was shot dead? There’s talk that Hall did it.” He repeated: “Whatever you do, don’t get involved.”
“Don’t worry,” I replied. “The plan didn’t make any sense, so there’s no way I’d do business with him anyway.” Simon seemed reassured and I hoped that was the end of the matter. A couple of weeks later, Davies telephoned me. “There’s a bit of a problem,” he said. “My friend, the one who sent you the business plan, didn’t get it back. He’s upset about it and he’s talking of sending some boys to see you.”
“What are you talking about?” I replied. “He never asked for it back. Anyway, it was five pages of nonsense. It didn’t have a hope in hell of getting off the ground.” Davies didn’t appear to be listening. “Nah, well, he wanted it back and apparently he’s sending some boys round to come and see you.”
“I still don’t understand what you are talking about,” I replied. After repeating himself a couple more times, Davies added: “I think I can get him to come round and see you so that you can straighten this out. That way there’ll be no need for his men to visit.” The story seemed very bizarre. I was increasingly concerned after Simon’s earlier warning. “Well, if he really has to,” I told Davies. “I don’t see why there was any need to involve me in this in the first place.”
Hall arrived at my house half an hour later. Even in smart clothing it was clear that he was physically very strong. He also had an intimidating air and stared at me throughout our conversation. Otherwise, he was calm and polite. He suggested that I should think again about his business plan, and an investment of £100,000 was mentioned. Not wanting to upset him, I claimed not to have any spare funds.
He asked if I could find someone else to invest. Hoping he would leave, I said I would do my best. The discussion lasted another few minutes, but it was still very unsettling having a man with such a bad reputation sitting in my living room. Hall then insisted that I drive away with him and follow his car to a disused building about a mile across Cambridge. This was the site around which his ‘business plan’ was based. During a brief chat there he explained excitedly how successful his plans were going to be. Having seen the business plan, I knew that he was living in a dream world. The conversation seemed ludicrous, so I just aimed to placate him and was pleased to get away, having reiterated that I would attempt to find an investor.
Hall had phoned me a few days later, a conversation in which I said that I was still looking for an investor but hadn’t had any luck yet. That was the last I heard until Hall and his ‘associate’ turned up on my doorstep a couple of weeks later.
Returning to my immediate predicament, the first question in my mind was why had Davies introduced me to someone who was such bad news? I had no answer. I heard rumours later that Davies had lent money to Hall and had subsequently been told that he needed to find an investor if he wanted the money repaid.
Presumably Davies simply chose someone that he knew was quite wealthy. I was well known at the gym as a successful gambler, and if I didn’t arrive in the Mercedes that Hall drove away in, then I’d pull up in a Ferrari. It was obvious even at a half-glance that I had plenty of disposable income. Clearly Hall had decided that I was a suitable candidate to be his unwilling investor. He had evidently been hoping that I might invest in his absurd scheme purely out of fear. I’ve since heard that he had persuaded people to do just that, coercing them into handing over maybe £5,000, or £2,000, because they were too frightened to turn him down. Hall had clearly decided to seek a much bigger sum from me and, following my refusal, he was now simply demanding money with menaces.
I was now faced with the biggest quandary of my life. My heart was still pounding, although its pace had slowed. My shirt was damp with a cold sweat, a strange feeling on a warm night in June. But I had to try to clear my head and decide what to do. I’d done nothing wrong, and on principle wasn’t paying Hall 70p, never mind £70,000. I could have stood my ground, refused to pay and stayed in Cambridge, but that would have meant living in fear, forever waiting for a knock on the door in the middle of the night.
I wasn’t prepared to give Hall the chance to come back and make good on his threats, so I’d have to go to the police. But that meant I was putting my life on the line. Word had it that the last person to get seriously on the wrong side of Hall had ended up dead. After Hall’s first visit to my house, I’d found out more about the murder of Adam Fraser. It wasn’t a murder committed in the heat of the moment after an argument had got out of hand. Fraser had been lured to waste ground and shot dead at point-blank range in a gangland execution. It had been a planned and cold-blooded killing.
Hall would eventually be charged with the murder. When the case came to court, evidence would be heard that Hall had told a third party that “Fraser took two in the head”. The trial would end in a hung jury, meaning that some but not all of the jury were convinced beyond reasonable doubt of Hall’s guilt. The CPS were insistent on bringing the case again, but this time it fell through. It would be years later before Hall would finally be given a long-term sentence for attempted murder after a psychopathic and near-fatal stabbing of a police officer.
However, at the moment Hall was very much still at large. Noone had dared to testify against him in a major case, and although I was scared witless at the prospect of doing so I knew that it had to be done. I also knew that if I did so, I risked becoming the next person to die from ‘two in the head’. I would have to be incredibly careful.
My only advantage was that I could choose to disappear completely. I had a good life in Cambridge but, with no family or long-term roots in the area, a rapid move elsewhere was possible. My only option was to make sure that neither Hall nor anyone connected to him could find me. There were problems implicit in this, as although I could recognise Hall, I was far from confident of identifying his partner, even if the police could find him. I’ve never been good at remembering faces and, in the brief time the two men had spent at my house, my eyes had nearly always been on Hall. And even if both men were caught, I’d still have no guarantees as to who else might come looking for me.
The decision to go to the police meant bringing an end to life as I knew it. In the months to come, I’d go to whatever lengths were necessary to ensure my safety. I’d remove myself completely from friends and family. I would live a very secluded life, mentally and physically withdrawn from the people I knew and cared about. I was mentally strong, but at the outset didn’t know how much this way of existence would take its toll. I would find myself changing completely into a much more withdrawn mental state, one that would take years to fully recover from. To this day, the emotions connected to these events are the ones that define me. They come back to me many times each month. If I have a sad or difficult moment, they’ll come back to me and push me on. Even in the happiest moments, when I had my first winner as an owner at Royal Ascot, my thoughts will go back to what I had to go through to get there. At a moment of triumph, those around me will often notice a moment or two when I am strangely subdued.
Leaving the city that had become my home would be very sad. I had worked so hard on my business from the moment I arrived in Cambridge and now, within a few tense minutes of Hall’s departure, I knew I would never spend another night in my own house. The taxi I had booked earlier now arrived, and I decided I might as well still take it. I was due to meet a friend and badly needed to talk to someone before going to the police. Harvey Cyzer, son of now-retired trainer Charles and later a trainer himself, was assistant to the legendary Henry Cecil at the time. He was stunned when I told him what had happened, and agreed that if I was going to involve the police I should do it as soon as possible.
He drove me back to my house. Concerned that Hall might reappear at any moment, I quickly packed a suitcase. I was in the house for less than ten minutes. Harvey said that I could stay with him in Newmarket after I left the police station, which was a brave offer considering the people we were dealing with. I thanked him, and he drove away, leaving me alone and facing a trip to the police station.
I decided to take the Ferrari with me. In doing so, what I lost in subtlety and secrecy I gained in the guarantee that I’d have enough speed to shake off anyone who pursued me. I drove to Parkside police station in Cambridge, taking a circuitous route to make sure I wasn’t being followed. How quickly my life had changed. Once there, I gave only the barest details to the duty officer, who explained that as it was just after 9pm, he doubted whether anybody from CID would appear until the next shift started at 10pm. He then showed me into a tiny interview room and left me alone.
The room had three chairs and a small table. With its poor lighting and cheap paint flaking off the walls, it felt almost like a cell. I felt very alone, and had an overwhelming urge to speak to someone. It seemed wise to involve as few people as possible – in their interests and mine – but I decided to telephone my gardener Jonathan. He also worked on his family’s market stall in the centre of town and was the most streetwise person I knew in Cambridge. I called him and asked if he could find out more about Calvin Hall. He rang back a few minutes later, sounding agitated, and said he’d been told that all the rumours were true, or worse, and that he wanted to stay well clear of the situation.
I put the phone on the table and stared at the wall. Five minutes later, Jonathan called again, emotion clear in his voice. Despite what he had been told, he’d decided to come to the police station to prevent me from going through such an ordeal alone. This was a courageous move from someone who was very easily connected to me by Cambridge people and I remembered it years later when the time came to do him a favour. He stayed at the police station for the rest of the evening, which was to last another six and a half hours.
Shortly after 10pm, a woman in her mid-twenties walked into the room and introduced herself as the detective on duty. She was holding a slip of paper which, among other things, included what seemed to be a one-line summary of my predicament supplied by the reception officer. £70K OR HIS LEGS. Not much beating around the bush there, then. I was amazed at how succinctly my troubles had been summed up. Four words had changed my life. It seemed very matter of fact.
I didn’t name Hall initially, as I was keen to see what assurances I would receive about my security when the case came to court. The arrival of a detective chief inspector shortly after midnight, wearing hastily donned gardening jeans, made it clear that the police were taking matters very seriously. After I received suitable assurances, I named Hall at 2am, but it would take another two hours before the 14-page statement was written up. Discussions with the DCI confirmed that Hall was considered the most dangerous man in the area and that they had wanted to see him taken off the streets for years. The police were keen to take me into their own protection, but this didn’t fit in with my plans. I didn’t want anyone else to know where I was unless it was absolutely necessary. I would do this my way.
I left the police station at 4am. Back in my car, the eerily quiet feel of that hour was magnified by my situation. Darkest just before the dawn? I can attest to that. The journey out of Cambridge would become a painfully familiar routine, as from that day on I rarely drove anywhere directly. I left Cambridge in the wrong direction, then drove around for long enough to make certain I wasn’t being followed. Finally, I cut across a country road to join the correct route some miles away from the city. Despite the obvious speed advantage of my Ferrari, I knew it wasn’t the right car to be driving and that I would soon need to find a more discreet method of travel.
The next day was starting as the worst day of my life was ending. I didn’t relax for a moment, eyes peeled for anything out of the ordinary. Every time an object on the roadside was lit up by my headlights, my eyes darted around looking for trouble. There were no dangers in this peaceful country morning, but I was in no fit state to make rational judgments. Harvey let me in to his home in Newmarket at around 4.45am and I went straight to bed.