Essex Boy (10 page)

There is no shame in experiencing fear, running from it maybe, but I had not even considered that. My friend Malcolm had become close friends with Damon Alvin since the incident with the traveller’s cheques had soured our relations. Alvin, a man like Tucker, who was prone to boasting and exaggerating but was undoubtedly still dangerous, had promised to acquire a live hand grenade for me.

‘Shoot Tucker’s window out and then toss it in the car. That will solve your problem,’ Alvin had said.

I had met Alvin on two occasions to pick the grenade up, but both times he had arrived with guns for sale but no grenade. Alvin kept saying, ‘It’s coming, it’s coming,’ but I reminded him that so was fucking Christmas.

Tony Tucker, the so-called ‘Diamond Geezer’, was living in a cul-de-sac called Diamond Close at the time. I parked at the entrance to it, lowered my seat so that I could see just over the dashboard and settled down for what I thought would be a long night. I could not see out the back of the vehicle because I had packed what few possessions of mine that Tate, Tucker and Rolfe had not smashed or stolen into the car and they were obstructing my view. As I glanced from side mirror to side mirror I could see a pair of headlights approaching from the direction of the nearby shopping centre. My pump-action shotgun and revolver lay loaded on the passenger seat next to me. When the vehicle reached me, it appeared to slow down but it did not stop.

As soon as it had disappeared from view I got out of my car and went to a nearby alleyway for a piss. When I walked back towards the car, a man with an Alsatian dog shone a high-powered torch into my face and asked me what I was doing.

‘Take that fucking light out of my face,’ I said.

I was not sure if the man was police or a security guard but he had some sort of uniform on. Again the man asked me what I was doing and when I explained that I had stopped for a piss in the alley he went in search of the evidence. Illuminated by a street light I could see that the man was a security guard but that fact gave me little comfort. If he saw the guns on the seat of my car, I was in no doubt that this Sherlock Holmes wannabe would ring the police.

I got into my car, threw a coat over the guns and locked the door. Banging on the window, the guard demanded that I open the door. Trying my best to ignore him, I turned the key in the ignition but the engine refused to start. As I pumped the accelerator the guard ran around to the passenger door and tried to open it. As I stretched across the seat to ensure that it was locked, I accidentally moved the coat and revealed the guns. Instead of doing the sensible thing and running away, the guard ran to the back of my car and opened the hatchback door.

‘Seize him, seize him,’ the guard shouted as he tried to force his deranged dog into my car.

Fortunately, my personal effects prevented the dog from getting into the vehicle but I knew it wouldn’t be long before fucking Sherlock would solve that particular problem. The car was still refusing to start and so I disengaged the handbrake and let it roll down a slight incline. The engine failed me when I first tried to bump start it but at the second attempt it roared into life.

As I pulled away, the guard, who was clearly intent on earning his wages that night, appeared in front of my car brandishing a scaffold pole. I accelerated rather than slowing down. I was wanted by the police for three attempted murders and numerous firearm offences and so I reasoned that running over an overenthusiastic security guard wouldn’t make much difference to any sentence that the courts were going to impose upon me. Bang! The sound of the windscreen exploding made me jump back in my seat. I looked up expecting to see the have-a-go hero sprawled across my bonnet but instead I saw a scaffold pole embedded in my windscreen. I drove almost blind for about 100 yards, pulled up and dislodged the pole.

The guard hadn’t given up his pursuit of me, so I jumped back into the car and sped off. I made my way to Southend where I parked the vehicle in a friend’s garage before lying down on the back seat and going to sleep. I knew that I would be unable to continue using the vehicle as the super-efficient guard would undoubtedly have written down the registration number. I also knew that he wouldn’t have been able to wait to tell the police about the guns he had seen, so they would undoubtedly be keen to find the car and its owner.

The following morning I took a drainage rod from my friend’s garage, purchased a silver toy gun from Toys ‘R’ Us and drove to a bus stop on the A13, just outside Southend. I put the drainage rod on the passenger seat, covered most of it with a coat and put the toy gun in the glove compartment. After checking that I had not left any personal effects in the car I left the keys in the ignition and got on the first bus back into town.

As every motorist knows, few traffic violations go unnoticed by the police and so I knew it wouldn’t be long before they swooped on a car parked at a bus stop. After checking the vehicle registration the police would discover that it was wanted in connection with an alleged firearms incident. The subsequent search would unearth a drainage rod that looked like the barrel of a shotgun and a toy gun. The security guard could have only told the police what he thought he might have seen, not if the weapons were real.

I know what you’re thinking, ‘fucking wise guy’, but sadly no plan in history has ever been perfect. When I had purchased the vehicle, I had failed to re-register it in my name. Maybe it was a long queue at the post office that prevented me from completing the necessary forms, or the fact that three drug-crazed arseholes were trying to murder me, which made me forget. Regardless of the reason, the vehicle had remained registered in the name of the friend that I had bought it off.

When the police found the vehicle and linked it to the incident with the security guard, they assembled a small army of their finest armed officers and surrounded my friend’s house. Just as they had been given the order to kick his door in and make an arrest I drove into his road in my BMW. As soon as I saw a white police Range Rover full of officers in boiler suits I knew that something was amiss, so I turned into the first side road I reached. Before I could breathe a sigh of relief, I found myself facing yet another police Range Rover, and so I fixed my gaze on the road ahead and continued driving.

When I was safely out of the area, I rang my friend to warn him about what I had seen but a police officer answered his phone. My friend told me sometime later that he had been underneath his Land Rover working on the gear box when the police had arrived.

‘All I could see and hear were about 20 pairs of heavy boots surrounding my car and some guy screaming, “Keep your hands where we can see them.”’

As he raised his hands he was grabbed by officers from both sides of the vehicle and a brief but almost comical tug of war ensued.

‘For fuck’s sake, lads, can you please decide which side of the car you want me to appear from,’ my friend had shouted.

At the rear of his house armed officers were scaling the garden wall. My friend’s father lived next door to him and he had been in the kitchen washing up when the officers arrived. He recalled that his son had left a book of forged MOTs in his house and so he set fire to the incriminating evidence and put it into the sink. Attracted by the plumes of black smoke pouring out of the kitchen window police officers had knocked on his door and insisted he tell them what he had been burning.

‘Photos of the wife. She left me last night,’ he lied.

The police demanded to examine the ashes but he refused to let them into his house before he had flushed them down the toilet. A lot of time and public money had gone into this raid, which threatened to prove fruitless and so a decision was made to trawl through both homes for ‘anything’ incriminating.

After several hours of meticulous searching, the police struck lucky and found a small amount of cannabis. My friend was questioned about the incident with the security guard and the toy gun that was found in the car but he quite rightly explained that he had sold the car to a stranger and knew nothing about such matters. The police had to justify arresting him and so he was charged with possession of cannabis. My friend and his family were not pleased about the trouble that I had unintentionally brought to their door and for that I publicly apologise. Thankfully, they forgave me because of the situation that I had found myself in with Tucker and his firm. It goes without saying that they are good, decent people.

Tucker, without his henchman, was suddenly not so brave. He told everybody that would listen, and particularly those that knew me, that Tate had been planning to lure me to the hospital so that he could shoot me. According to Tucker it was Tate who had stolen everything from my home so that he could furnish a house where his prostitutes were living, and it was Tate who had goaded me into trying to murder Ron Redding.

‘Tell Nipper, Tate’s been locked up and he is now safe. I won’t forget that he tried to shoot me, but I can understand why. If he leaves Essex, I’ll forget it,’ Tucker said.

My gut instinct was to go and shoot the bastard because I knew that he was feeling vulnerable without Tate, but I had to think of my family, who were still in hiding in Ipswich.

I asked Jason Smythe to tell Tucker that I would leave Essex on the condition that my family could return unhindered.

‘If anybody so much as looks at them, I will return and Tucker’s family will be the first to go,’ I said. That night, my father and my sisters returned home and after a brief reconciliation I left Essex to live in Chichester where I rented a bedsit from a man who was the double of actor John Cleese.

It was my sister’s birthday that week and so I went into a local jeweller and bought her a pair of diamond earrings.

As I counted the cash the lady behind the counter happened to mention that there were forged banknotes circulating in the area. I told her that I had been given a dodgy £50 recently and had since become more vigilant when accepting notes from strangers. After gift-wrapping the earrings the lady asked for my name and address. I told her that my name was Steven Stephens and gave a false address, which was then written on the receipt.

I left the shop and after checking the cash that I had on me, realised that I had paid with counterfeit notes. I still had a wad of Tate’s forged banknotes. Normally, I would have kept the counterfeit notes separate from any genuine cash and slipped the odd one or two into a bundle when settling a large bill. Because of everything that had gone on, my money had been thrown into a bag and the first wad I grabbed had all been dodgy notes. I couldn’t return to the shop and admit my guilt and I knew that it would only be a matter of time before the police were called. The shop had CCTV and I assumed that my image would have been recorded, so it would only be a matter of time before I was identified and I would be arrested not only for the forged notes but also for the three attempted murders.

The following morning, I was in town when I became aware of two people following me, one male, and the other female. I stopped to look in a shop window to see if they would walk past me but they both grabbed one of my arms and informed me that they were police officers and I was under arrest. When I enquired what for, I was told that I was suspected of paying for jewellery with counterfeit money. The officers radioed for a vehicle and when it arrived I was placed in the back.

Fortunately for me, I had not taken my handgun with me that day and I had left all but one of the forged banknotes at home. Opening my wallet I showed the officers my cash and invited them to check that all of the notes were genuine. As I did so I let all of the notes fall to the floor of the vehicle. The officers were keen to help me pick them up as they may have been of evidential value and while they did this I put the forged note into my mouth, chewed it up and swallowed it.

At the police station the officers wrote down all the serial numbers of my genuine notes and checked their validity with an ultra-violet light. When they were satisfied that they were not forged, they asked me where I was living as they wished to search my home. I gave my father’s address in Essex and said that I was visiting the area because I had recently split from my girlfriend.

‘I rowed with her and drove off. I ended up here and slept in my car,’ I said.

The police knew that I was lying but they couldn’t prove anything and so I was released with a stark warning. ‘Leave town as soon as possible or we will be paying you another visit.’

I didn’t need telling twice. If the police had bothered to check me out properly, I could have been languishing in a cell for several years.

The festive season really made me feel homesick. I had spent Christmas alone before, in prison, but this was different. I was being forced to spend it away from my family because of three bullies. In the early hours of Christmas Eve, I decided that I would throw caution to the wind and return to Essex to give Christmas cards to family and friends. After a fleeting visit to family members and a five-minute performance given for the benefit of my girlfriend, I drove to my friend’s house who had sold me the Volvo. I reasoned that I had caused him and his family enough trouble and so decided to just post a card through his door rather than deliver my seasons greetings personally. As I pushed the envelope through his letterbox, I was unaware that two police officers, in an unmarked vehicle parked across the street, were watching me. One of the officers later told me that he had nearly choked on his coffee when he saw me.

‘That’s Steve Ellis, the guy who’s wanted for shooting Pat Tate,’ he had told his colleague.