Robert Louis Stephenson wrote his classic
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
during a week-long cocaine-binge, while polar adventurer Ernest Shackleton explored Antarctica propelled by tablets of Forced March, which, taken hourly, promised to ‘allay hunger and prolong the power of endurance’. The 1880s also saw the launch of Coca-Bola chewing gum – ‘a powerful tonic to the muscular and nervous system, enabling the chewer to perform additional labour and relieving fatigue and exhaustion’.
The cocaine-infused wine, Vin Mariani, received glowing endorsements from royalty, prime ministers and even the Pope. Coca-Cola was introduced in 1886 as a valuable brain-tonic and cure for all nervous afflictions, and promoted as a temperance drink ‘offering the virtues of coca without the vices of alcohol’. The new beverage was invigorating and popular and little wonder: until 1903, a typical serving contained around sixty milligrams of cocaine. All traces of the drug have long since been removed.
Totally unaware of its dangers, many doctors began prescribing cocaine as an antidote to morphine addiction and soon found themselves with patients dependent on both. People have been underestimating its power ever since.
It wasn’t until 28 July 1916 that the possession of cocaine without a prescription became a criminal offence, and not until 1920, the year the Dangerous Drugs Act was passed, that the use of cocaine went underground. It resurfaced in the America of the 1970s, popularised by hard-living rock bands and movie stars alike, but found few takers outside this elite market. In 1972 just one in eleven Americans between the age of eighteen and twenty-five had tried cocaine. Within a decade that figure had risen to one in four, and the first evidence of equally startling growth began to appear on the other side of the Atlantic.
Today hundreds of thousands of occasional users take the drug and suffer no ill-effects, though for some it is all too easy to fall into the trap of addiction, which is what happened to Steve Roberts and Eugene Carter.
In the golden days of organised crime, drink and drugs were shunned by the men who considered themselves part of a noble profession. Going out to celebrate a job done well was one thing, but drinking before an armed robbery or other ‘job’ was heavily frowned on. One of the big differences with today’s villains is that many of them, like Tippett, Roberts and the Bradish brothers, will happily spend most of their time in a drug-fuelled haze. And, as Tippett knows from bitter personal experience, that can cause problems in itself.
‘Charlie changes people in lots of ways, but the paranoia it brings is the worst thing of all. I remember one night I’d been out drinking with my mates Lee and Frank, both of whom were sons of villains, and a guy called James Lawlor, who was a bit of a blagger. We were all in the Crown in Southwark Park Road, snorting lines of coke and drinking. When it got to closing time none of us were ready to call it a night so we went back to Lee’s flat just up the road to carry on.
‘We were all having a great laugh and a few more of Frankie’s mates joined us. Between us we must have got through at least two ounces of coke and by four a.m. we were completely wasted and the paranoia was starting to set in.
‘I was sitting next to James and he suddenly pulled one of those old-fashioned cut-throat razors out of his pocket. He was playing around with it, flicking it back and forth. I hadn’t seen one like that for donkey’s years so I asked if I could have a look. He swung the blade over and tried to cut me with it. I managed to move out of the way just in time but he still caught my neck.
‘Then it just turned. We all started fighting each other and it was all for no reason. It was one big fucking tear-up. We were all charlied up and E’d up, and it just got too much. James turned into a complete fucking psycho, he was out of control, trying to cut everyone. Punches and kicks and bits of furniture were flying around all over the place. Me and Lee managed to get James to the door and kicked him out but we were convinced he was going to come back and get us. We barricaded the door and sat there with a little 410 shotgun waiting for it. Every little noise we heard was like pure hell. It was the longest night of my life.’
Three weeks later Tippett read a story in the paper that made him realise he’d had a lucky escape. Lawlor and his friend Brian Stead had been out on a pub crawl when they ended up at a place called the Gin Palace club in the Old Kent Road. There they happened across Ray Brooker, a devoted family man but even more devoted social drinker. Brooker had been due to go to his daughter’s nativity play but chose to spend his time drinking with Lawlor and Stead instead.
They travelled back to Stead’s flat and carried on drinking and taking vast quantities of cocaine. When Lawlor left the room to go to the toilet, Brooker remarked drunkenly, ‘I’m going to do him one of these days.’ As soon as Lawlor returned, Stead told him what had been said. Lawlor then grabbed a .38 pistol and shot Brooker in the mouth. Both men then stabbed him repeatedly.
Once Brooker was dead Lawlor called his brother, Jason, who came to the flat and helped the pair to cut up the body in the bath.
‘But then as they were driving the body to the dump James reaches into one of the bags, pulls out Brooker’s arm and starts using it to make hand signals. Then some girls go past and he uses the arm to wave at them. He was an absolute psychopath. It turned out he’d been working as a hitman for a couple of the south London gangs and had killed at least three people. At the same time he’d been involved in loads of different armed robberies. The police had been waiting for him to do another – I think they were hoping he’d try to shoot his way out and they’d get the chance to kill him on the job. Now he’s doing life instead.’
It used to be the case that only a few well-known criminals, mostly in London, had direct contacts with the Colombians. Now it’s spread across the whole country.
Curtis ‘Cocky’ Warren, a Merseyside drug baron, who is now serving time in the Netherlands, was one of the first, and dozens have followed in his footsteps.
In Manchester throughout 2002 Donovan Hardy ran a massive cocaine empire from behind the facade of a mobile-phone shop. Hardy would send his cash to Colombia – either directly, via Panama, or by paying money into his bank account on the Cayman Islands – and pick up the drugs in the Netherlands. He employed several couriers, who would bring back small batches of cocaine, usually around two kilos at a time, from a stash of up to a hundred kilos that he kept in the false ceiling of a flat in Rotterdam.
In Scotland in the early part of 2003 a four-man gang led by James Mair paid £1 million direct to a Colombian cartel for a half-tonne consignment of cocaine and a further £50,000 for dozens of bales of raw rubber, which would be used to conceal the drugs on their journey from Panama.
But even for those who fail to link up directly with the South Americans, there are still vast sums to be made from the cocaine business. This has prompted police in London to change tactics and go after the mid-level dealers, who had been virtually left alone for many years while detectives focused on large-scale importers and street sellers.
According to intelligence sources, these entrepreneurs are vital to the supply chain. Some are hardened criminals, involved in gang and drug activity, but others are seemingly respectable business people running food outlets, property and import/export companies that act as fronts for illegal activities.
It took only three weeks for me to track one down.
CHAPTER FIVE
I hear Rick long before I see him. His gravelly Yorkshire tones cut through the hubbub of the pub in Norton, just outside Doncaster, where I’ve spent the last forty-five minutes waiting for him to arrive.
He bustles through the swing doors, laughing like a drain as the teenage girls on each of his burly arms giggle and make wide-eyed kissy faces at him. Rick is a stocky six-footer and, notwithstanding the beginnings of a neat round beer-gut protruding over the top of his black jeans, looks supremely fit and formidable. His dark hair has been cropped to disguise the early stages of male-pattern baldness and he wears a perfectly tailored smart-but-casual dark grey jacket over a black T-shirt. Confidence oozes out of every pore: the first impression is that of a high-class spiv, the sort of man you’d find selling brand new Jaguars and Bentleys rather than second-hand Fiestas.
Rick heads straight for the bar so Billy, who has set up the meeting on my behalf, nips over to let him know I am there. Eventually, having installed the two girls at a corner table and picked up a bottle of premium beer, Rick wanders over. He eyes me cautiously and makes no attempt to apologise for being so late. I know better than to mention it: he is, after all, one of the biggest coke dealers in the North-east and he’s taking time out to speak to me purely as a favour to his friend Billy.
The air of confidence crumbles alarmingly when I pull out my MiniDisc recorder and place it on Rick’s side of the table. By the time Billy and I have reassured him that there’s nothing to worry about he has drained his first bottle and returned to the bar for another, stopping off to talk to the girls once more on his way back.
Finally Rick returns to the table and sits himself down, seemingly eager to get the whole thing out of the way as quickly as possible. ‘Okay,’ he says, with a half-sigh. ‘Tell me what you want to know.’
My first question is the most obvious one: of all the town and cities in the North-east, why does Rick base himself in Doncaster? Rick smiles, settles back in his chair and sips his beer while nodding slowly. I know what you mean,’ he says. ‘It’s not so long ago that, as far as drugs were concerned, all roads led to London, end of story. Everything was controlled from there and passed through there, regardless of where the stuff finally ended up.
‘Don’t get me wrong, London’s still important, it’s kind of like the main hub, always will be, but Liverpool, Birmingham, Bristol – they’re all moving up the ladder. These days a lot of the big shipments miss out London all together and go straight to the regions ’cos that’s where the demand is.
‘So why Doncaster? Well, it’s a big city and it’s central, especially to Yorkshire. A lot of people come together here. There are always a lot of faces in Doncaster and a lot of activity. There has to be. The reality of the drugs trade is that the big players are a lot more spread out than a lot of people would think. Otherwise it just wouldn’t work.’
Born in Leeds, Rick moved to Grimsby at an early age and, after working as a doorman and gaining a reputation for being useful with his fists, found himself drifting into a world of crime. ‘It were never a deliberate choice, like, it just sort of happened. You start out doing little favours for people, and before you know it, you’re at it yourself.’
After dipping into protection and debt collection, Rick turned to large-scale bootlegging, one of the first in his area to do so. He made a small fortune almost overnight but ended up in prison for eighteen months after being caught during a random Customs sweep. It was soon after his release that he was invited to join the criminal equivalent of the Premier League. And, surprisingly, it was all courtesy of the Kray twins.
In March 1969 Ronald and Reginald Kray were convicted of the murders of Jack ‘The Hat’ McVitie and George Cornell, and the detectives responsible for putting them away felt confident that their gang – the Firm – had also been brought down.
Not so. Despite remaining firmly behind bars for the next thirty-odd years, the Kray twins were able to use the extraordinary power of their name not only to keep the Firm going but to amass around £5 million as their share of the proceeds of their new criminal enterprise. Some of their income came from books and film deals as well as payments from newspapers and magazines for exclusive interviews. Other money came as the result of legitimate ‘sponsorship’ arrangements through which dozens of businesses – at least ten of them debt-collection agencies – set up deals in which the twins received a cut of the profits in return for allowing them to use the Kray name.
But the bulk of their income came from the criminals who wanted to advance up the career ladder and knew that being a part of the Firm was the way to do it. A typical deal would involve an up-and-coming gangster writing to the twins and asking whether, in return for a retainer of, say, £800 per month, they would endorse him. If they agreed, the twins needed do nothing more. The up-and-coming gangster would be able to say he was part of the Firm and join the list of those allowed to meet the twins in person.
During such occasions the newcomers would find themselves rubbing shoulders with regular visitors who were noted members of the old guard, men like Joey Pyle, Freddie Foreman and Tony Lambrianou, who had long since retired from a life of crime. While the old-timers swapped war stories, the newcomers would be introduced to one another. The system worked like a dream: without ever leaving their cells, the Krays helped put together dozens of drug deals, robberies and other scams. Throughout their prison career the twins never masterminded any direct criminal activity but their knowledge, criminal contacts, and the sheer power of their name made them pivotal figures in the underworld.
According to Ronnie’s widow, Kate Kray: ‘If somebody needed something or wanted something it would cost them money from the moment they walked into Broadmoor or prison to see one of the twins. They never organised crimes but they were there to make introductions and advise for money.
‘Ron was the kingpin. Villains from Scotland, Wales and all over . . . they didn’t know each other but they all knew Ron. So if you had some villains from Liverpool coming down to London to do a bit of business they would pay Ron to make the introductions. He never wanted to know the details of the villainy – the only thing he was interested in was how much his cut was going to be.’
In time-honoured tradition, Ronnie and Reggie referred to this money as their ‘pension’ and it soon amounted to far more than the twins could ever spend themselves. Some of it was diverted to charity, some sent to keep their wives, friends and ‘colleagues’ who had fallen on hard times out of the gutter. There was more than enough to go round: almost all the payments were made in cash and Kate Kray alone was picking up at least six £800 ‘pensions’ each month. She once collected a single package that turned out to contain £85,000.