Powder Wars, page 5
Fuming, I gets in the jalopy and goes out looking for Dave Dicko. I found out that the cunt still lived with his mum and dad in a tenement block off’ve Scotland Road. Gets there, knocks on the door, he answers, I drags him onto the piss-smelling landing and batters him there and then. Am kicking fuck out of his head and ramming my boot into his bollocks. Cunt is writhing around in agony. Picks him up by the hair, drags him over to the metal railings and starts twatting his head and teeth on the metal crossbar. Blood everywhere, in all fairness. Not only that but I’m half thinking his ma is watching all this from their kitchen window.
I’d already battered Dicko once before, a few years earlier. Was how we met in fact. So I’m still booting fuck out of him when Snowball comes running out of Dicko’s ma’s kennel. But I’m thinking there’s no way Snowball is going to jog in. He’s a shithouse, knowmean? But while my back is turned he gets me right on the crown with his fist, the sneaky cunt, and I go down. Stars and all that. I’m half conscious.
A few seconds later I’m coming round and I feel that they’ve picked me up and are carrying me across the landing. Don’t know where this is going in fairness, but do not have the means to fight back. I can feel myself being manhandled across the iron crossbar at the top of the wall over which is a four- or five-storey drop. Suddenly I can see the ground. I’m half hanging over the edge. I’m dead, no two ways. If they throw me off at this height. Pure pulverised, I am, no two ways.
But I could sense they were struggling. Dave Dicko was a near-dead man walking after his thrashing, wobbling and blabbering all over the show. So I kicks out wildly. Grabs the fucking railing and would not let go for the life of me. Snowball was punching and biting me. Kicking my hands. Doing everything to make me let go, la. Digging his nails in. Pure birds’ stuff. But pure willing he was, to throw me off. After all I’d done for the little cunt, as well. But would I let go? Would I fuck. Don’t know how, but by my own physical strength I edged my way back to safety. Pure contorted my way over the railing, grabbed Snowball who was now realising the balance of power was shifting, and punched him. I battered them both. They were both covered in blood. I gave them one hell of a beating. Snowball never robbed one of my lorries again and Dave Dicko never stepped out of line.
After a few years with the Hole in the Wall gang it started to dry up. So I started to plan my outro. We started losing money. I remember it began after we’d planned to do this tyre warehouse, which had thousands of big wagon wheels inside and all that. These were fetching big money at the time and I had good connections in the haulage industry to fence them through. We did the business and I made about eight grand off my end, which was about a grand-an-hour in my estimation. The lads who we sold them to were screaming out for more. So we lined another tyre warehouse up in St Helens, but when we got there it was too belled up. Alarms were becoming fashionable then and this one was a shocker so we aborted the mission. But by this time the lads were getting greedy. They didn’t want to go home empty handed, cut their losses and that. So Dick the Stick backed the wagon into a warehouse depot on an industrial estate nearby and opened the doors. It was a slaughterhouse with a huge refrigerated storage area. So we cleaned it out of the meat, steaks and all that. It was a quick hit. A chancer, but we got £1,500 each. I was slowly realising that the Hole in the Wall gang had possibly peaked. That kind of tank was no good to me, in all fairness.
The next job was a huge cigarette warehouse in Speke, Liverpool. If it came off, this was big time, worth tens of grands to us, so we had a team of seven men looking at it. We’d done these before and it had always been a military operation. In. Out. Get paid. But the card-marker who’d put it up had got his gen wrong. When we met outside the warehouse they were all arguing, saying: ‘He said it wasn’t alarmed but it fucking is and that.’ Pure scene, knowmean? Amateurs. Bringing it ontop for all and sundry. The next thing a busie car drives past. I clock them in the mirror and was thinking it all looks a bit skewwiff this, know where I’m going? So I turned to Ronnie and said: ‘I’m fucking going.’
A few days later Ronnie rings me up and offers another one. It was a Crown Paints warehouse. It was a simple hole in the wall job. But as soon as Ritchie puts his head through the hole there’s alarms going off everywhere. Even though he’d assured me that it had been disabled. There were busies and guards all over the show. I managed to run down this road, then along a railway line and up an embankment and get back to the van. I realised that Ritchie was getting sloppy. No two ways. After that, I didn’t want to know any more.
* * *
During his time with the Hole in the Wall gang Paul had decided to set down some roots. He got married to a local girl called Christine from a respectable family in 1971. A short while later on 1 July 1971 she gave birth to their first son, Jason.
* * *
PAUL: We were always getting nicked for this and that. But it always seemed to be minor things, which no one cared about. We just got on with doing the time. It was second nature. It was a nice break from all the madness.
When I was 21 I got sent to borstal for robbing a car. It was for something daft, which I couldn’t even remember doing. I done it for a laugh with the lads. I was still only young. The only problem about being inside is that you couldn’t earn. The Hole in the Wall were at their height and making a lot of dough. And here I was in a fucking borstal with a load of fucking vandals and bike robbers and that. Serves me right for being a tit, in all fairness.
On home leave I married Christine. I was half-doing it because I knew getting married might get me out of borstal quicker, go down well with the authorities and all that. It did. I got out. But I didn’t bother going home much. It was straight out onto the street to start earning again.
* * *
CHRISTINE: When I first met Paul I didn’t know he was a villain. He had two jobs. He seemed respectable. I noticed that people were frightened of him, but I thought nothing of it. I just thought he was well respected. He had a nickname – he was known as Oscar in the pubs and clubs. So when people would be going on about how bad this Oscar was and being terrified of him I didn’t fully understand. It was as though they were talking about someone else.
He went to borstal for car theft. He just brushed it off as though that was normal. Even then I didn’t know he was a gangster because it seemed such a small thing. I married him when he came back on home leave. My mum went crazy at the time. Mine was a respectable family. We all had normal jobs. It was only after we got married that I realised the price I had paid.
He was a villain. A big villain. He was robbing warehouses and factories all the time. Stealing wagons with Ritchie, his uncle. He was always committing crime. I couldn’t believe it. It was non-stop. Paul would disappear for about ten days at a time and when he returned, if his dinner was not on the table, he’d be off again.
That was my life with Paul Grimes. I was a fool.
5
* * *
Den for Meets
Meanwhile, back at the Oslo, an orgy of gang violence had erupted. Paul was gradually consolidating his power base. His ambition was to make the club his personal headquarters, a 24-hour-a-day operational centre for organised crime. The plan was simple: to make the Oslo open season for gangsters, allowing him to oversee and control all of their various graft and thus entitling him to a slice of all the best action that went through there.
But paving the way to power was violent and bloody work. There was no structure to the Liverpool gangs. They were disorganised, fiercely independent and totally fluid in membership. Many of the top faces were little more than latter-day guns for hire, who would join a gang to carry out an armed robbery or a warehouse raid, and then move onto their competitors once the ‘work’ had been executed. There was no hierarchy or manor to protect. The pecking order was purely based on crime-driven revenues. Financially, many of the gangsters were wealthier than their counterparts in London and Manchester. Organisationally, it was a recipe for disaster. There were constant gang wars, internecine feuds, shootings, stabbings, murders . . . it was total chaos.
Loyalty was based on who was paying the ‘wages’ at any instant. Astonishingly, the one keystone, the only constant that kept the whole house of cards from imploding on itself, was the code of silence, or the gangland code as it was known to doormen and club owners. No one talked to the police, no matter what. Against this backdrop, Paul launched his bid for power and began his struggle to carve out a profitable niche.
* * *
PAUL: Before I took over the door, the Oslo nightclub was pretty innocent. It was stuck in a time warp. It was full of Norwegians and Germans who just wanted to get drunk and get laid. Sometimes they’d refuse to pay £25 for a bottle of vodka. They knew they were being ripped. Which is fair enough, but it’s one of them. I’d have to do them in anyways. I was taking my wages out of the place and the right to charge drunken seafarers £25 for a bottle of vodka was that of the management. That’s how they made their bonuses. As long as I ensured it kept coming, it was happy days all round. Mind you, I half used to think about taking the place over lock, stock. But in truth, I could not be arsed with the hassle.
On my second week a huge German seaman just refused point blank to hand over his dough to the barman. There was no messing round in these situations – it was rule by rod of fear, literally. I hit him over the head with a baseball bat. Had a good run up as well, to be fair. But the baton just snapped like a chopstick over his skull and he was just left standing there. He picked me up and threw me across the room. But that was all civilian stuff. Silly stuff. I was too busy plotting and scheming to be bothered by sailors kicking off and that.
It wasn’t long before I started letting in all the bad lads. I turned the Oslo into a den for meets, where the lads could come and sit down and have a meeting about this and that, without having to worry about the busies and none of that. There were a few places like that around town. Useful places, where the boys could come and do business. For instance there was the Jokers Club on Edge Lane near Littlewoods. It was 24 hours on the trot. There were card schools in there and all the gangsters would go there to discuss work. Not to have a good time and show off and that, but to organise things, to get all their ducks in a row before doing something.
There was another place called the Lucky Club. It was a seamen’s club and if you were English you needed a letter from God to get in. But that was the point, Billy Grimwood could go in there and put together a blag and no one would understand nothing. The seaman would be halfway to the Pacific the next day. No witnesses to meetings, no surveillance, fuck all. So that was my template for the Oslo, know where I’m going? That’s what I desired most.
For security I brought in my best mate Mick Cairns on the doors. I met him when I was 17, fighting on a ferry as it happens. He had hands like shovels. He could hangle violence. One night some gangsters chopped him up with a sword, hacked right down his spine and cut his back to ribbons. It would have killed most men, but he survived. He was also a good earner as well and if he had a good score, he’d kick some back to me – just good manners and that.
Not long after he started in the Oslo he came in with a huge haul of jewellery. He got £26K in cash there and then. He couldn’t fit it all in a bag so we put it in a pillowcase. I told him to buy a house with it. A nice semi-detached was only about £2,000 then, so I figured he could have bought a mansion. The soft cunt spent it within a couple of weeks. Mainly on his family, to be fair, but he did like his drink too, Mick did.
We used to do little one-offs on our own. Stealing wagons and that, on the side. We served a bit of time in Walton for having a lorry load of sewing-machines off, but as well as muscle you needed to be Kofi Annan to keep everyone happy in the underworld. It was very diplomatical. There was a lot strife.
I noticed that one crew were coming in quite a lot. Tommy Cabana, Georgie Lawton and Poppy Hayes. They used to rob together; they were a crew. They were armed robbers, but they used to do snatches as well and other things. A few sneaks here and there. So after they started coming in the Oslo I’d go out robbing with them as well. They’d put me onto things, put some work my way. A bit of tribute, if you will. That’s the way it worked.
Cabana was their car man, their get-away driver. Lawton was a big feller who could handle himself. He had a big neck, looked a bit like Arnie, in all fairness. Poppy had been driven near-insane by too much bird too young, staying in his cell for five stretches and refusing to come out, all of that. But they were fucking hard work, these fellers, totally uncontrollable. In fairness, some of it was half comical.
One night Poppy ran in the Oslo with nothing on and ran round. I told him to leave it out. The sailors did not want to see that kind of carry on, thinking it was a fruit bar and that. He looked half-cake, knowmean? Running around with his cock out and that. But he kept on coming in on his own and standing around and talking to people with fuck all on. The lads were chocca with it, to be fair. They’d be planning to go over the wall on some big caper or whatever and he’d be standing there bollocko in the meeting. I could never understand that kind of behaviour, but then they would do mad things, fucking stupid things, which would cause untold, and bring the heat on – literally.
They came into the Oslo looking for a bloke called Charley Krout. They were edgy and maniacal, knowmean? I got onto it straightaway, knowing there was going to be grief and to be honest I was looking for an easy night. Ritchie had called to say there was a Hole In The Wall job on and he wanted to come down and have a word. There were a few other bits and bobs that needed sorting. Suddenly Poppy Hayes gets hold of Charley and sets him on fire, there and then, in the bar. Poured lighter fuel on him and put a flame to it. Whoosh! Could not believe it, la.
The lad who I had on the door, Mick, ran over and was trying to put the flames out with his bare hands. Poppy and them were just laughing and wanting to do it again, finish him off as punishment. Mick was like: ‘What did you do that for, you silly cunts?’ But then all three of them turned on Mick, and set him on fire, trying to properly human torch him with the lighter fluid and that. Could not believe what was going on myself, but luckily I was able to put it out with my hands and jacket and that. By that time I was fuming, la. Again literally. Had had enough. With Ritchie coming down and that. Did not pure need it, knowmean? I waded into these three clowns and it kicked off big time. There was a bit of a go-around in the bar, but me and Mick battered all three of them and threw them out.
Later that night it kicked off again. They waited for us to finish and tried to ambush us. This tit-for-tat thing went on for months. Boring to be honest, but what could you do with dickheads like these? They wouldn’t let it go. If they seen me they attacked me on sight. Like Kato, la, off’ve the Pink Panther and that. No messing, there was always a big to do in the middle of the street; they just wouldn’t let it go.
Two weeks later I was coming back from a Hole In The Wall job with my wagon full of swag. Sees Georgie Lawton driving his big American car round, sees red and tried to reverse over it. Then I jumped out and kicked fuck out of him. I hit him in the body with a metal bar, swinging at him with everything. Then when he went down I booted fuck out of his head. Smashed his skull. Left him for near-dead. But didn’t kill him.
That happened a lot with villains. One day you’d be doing a bit of work together and the next you would be fighting. Way it goes. It was bad for business, in my book, but fellers like these lived and breathed violence. They were unpredictable. Even the big firms.
We were doing a lot of business with the Bennett family on the docks. Making a lot of money, to be fair. But one part of their family decided to go to war with the doormen in town, trying to take over and that. Their tactic was simple: drive-by shootings. Just drive by in a car and shoot up the door. No back answers. They were psychopaths. Then on the side, one of them declares his own one-man war against us at the Oslo and a few other clubs. Just because one them knocked him back one night. One night he shot up the door at the Oslo. He was a fitness fanatic who trained like he was in the SAS. He used to run down the Dock Road with a haversack full of bricks. He pulled up in a car on his own, wound the window down and blew the doors off. It was time to get armed. If this one tried it again I wanted to slot him there and then at the wheel of his jalopy.
A lad called Joey Duvall had started coming in the Oslo. I’d OK’d it. No sweat, he was. He just used to sit in the corner and play crib. He was an armed robber and gunrunner, a big hitter, in all fairness, and he’d started to do a lot of business in the Oslo. After the shootings, he told me come and see him at his flat in Picton Road the next morning. Joey pulled a load of guns out from under his bed and said: ‘You might need one of these. Take your pick.’
There were loads – revolvers, automatics, Magnums, Berettas – you name it. I settled for a .38, a silver one with pearl hangles [handles]. Better it was. Nice and small, but flash enough to be noticed. Which is important, by the way. Saves you having to use it half the time, knowmean, if folk know you’ve got one. Goes without saying that he didn’t want nothing for it. Currying brownie points with yours truly, he was, Joey, buying himself a bit of a pass and that. Is right.
‘Any food [bullets] for this or what?’ I asked. Joey gave me couple handfuls of ammo which I put in my kecks pocket: ‘Nice one.’
When I got back to the Oslo I put the gun on top of a little shelf above the door. It was one of those high doors of an old bank. All kind seemed to be coming in the Oslo. Later that day Paul Conteh popped in to see Joey Duvall. He was John Conteh’s older brother. John Conteh was the world light heavyweight boxing champion at the time. Paul was an armed robber. They used to sit and plan armed robberies.
