Essex Boy (3 page)

Malcolm knew instinctively that something was untoward, as he kept saying to me that he thought we were going to be raided. When we arrived back at his flat, he announced that he and his girlfriend were going away the following morning for a few days. The next day, as he prepared to leave, the front door of the flat was kicked in. I guessed that it was the police because the postman, Malcolm’s only other regular visitor, had an irritating habit of rattling the letterbox rather than knocking or kicking the front door off its hinges. Before I managed to crawl out of bed, my room was filled with menacing faces, who ordered me to raise my hands above my head and sit up. A pair of handcuffs was snapped onto my wrists and I was informed that I was under arrest for armed robbery. I was ordered to get dressed and, after doing so, I asked if I could get my shoes out of the kitchen. One of the officers told me to remain where I was while he fetched my shoes but when he went to open the kitchen door Malcolm’s Rottweiler began to snarl and bark at him.

‘Is your dog dangerous?’ the officer asked.

‘No, my dog has never bitten anybody. He would run a mile if you shouted at him,’ I replied.

Feeling reassured, the officer ignored the snarling dog and attempted to walk into the kitchen. The Rottweiler immediately launched itself at the officer and sank his teeth into his arm. Screaming for help, the policeman stumbled back out of the kitchen and slammed the door.

‘I thought you said your dog doesn’t bite,’ he shouted.

‘He doesn’t,’ I replied, ‘but that’s not my dog.’

Red-faced, the officer, who wasn’t seriously hurt, soon established that I was not Malcolm and de-arrested me. Moments later, raised voices and a barrage of expletives indicated that the policeman’s colleagues had finally located Malcolm. They were in the process of arresting him in another room and so my savaged guard went to join them, leaving me alone. When the police left with Malcolm, I must admit that I was surprised that I too hadn’t been arrested. Not that I had had anything to do with the robbery; I just thought that police procedure would have demanded it, in case I disposed of any incriminating evidence on Malcolm’s behalf. Revelling in my good fortune I settled down to watch the morning TV talk shows but just as the results of yet another paternity test were going to be announced, two policemen entered the flat via the remains of the front door. ‘Steven Ellis, I am arresting you on suspicion of armed robbery,’ one said. I was allowed to fetch my own shoes from the kitchen before being put into a police car and taken to the local station.

As soon as my cell door slammed shut I heard Malcolm calling from an adjacent cell, ‘Is that you, Steve? Is that you?’ Over the next hour we discussed our predicament in whispers through our cell doors and it was agreed that I would not ask for bail if charged. Our thinking was that so long as the police got either one of us for the robbery then they would be satisfied and not pursue the other. I had a previous robbery conviction following my bungled attempt to hold up a local convenience store with a knife. If I said nothing when questioned and didn’t ask for bail afterwards, the police might think I had accepted my fate and look more favourably upon any bail application that Malcolm might make. After spending three or four weeks on remand, I could then make my own bail application to the court and, as they didn’t have much, if any, evidence linking me to the robbery, it would likely be granted.

Our plan initially worked like a well-oiled machine but, like all machines, it did eventually break down. Malcolm had been granted bail immediately by the police and I was remanded in custody to HMP Chelmsford to await trial. Three weeks later, and just five days before Christmas, my solicitor made my application for bail but, to my horror, the magistrates rejected it and I was returned to my prison cell.

CHAPTER TWO

There was very little festive spirit in HMP Ohelmsford that christmas.
Visits from my family served only as a reminder of the seasonal goodwill and cheer that I was missing. However, I was not alone. The alcohol-fuelled festive celebrations around Essex, and the pitched battles that ensued in the pubs and on the streets, brought numerous new faces into the prison. This fresh intake of inmates brought with them much needed illegal contraband and news of events from beyond the prison walls. It was refreshing, to say the least, to have new blood in our midst. Among the new arrivals one man stood out from the rest. I can only describe him as being a tanned, muscle-bound man mountain. His name was Patrick Terence Tate and, according to the other inmates, he was a legend in the Essex underworld.

In December 1988 Tate had been dining with his partner, Sarah Saunders, at a restaurant called the Happy Eater in Basildon. The Happy Eater was a fast-food outlet specialising in flipped burgers and American-style fries rather than gourmet delights. Tate had popped in there to help satisfy his enormous appetite after a night of particularly heavy clubbing, which had been fuelled by a cocktail of drugs. After consuming enough food for three men, the bill arrived and Tate reasoned, in his unreasonable manner, that he was being overcharged.

‘Fucking rob me?’ he screamed, as he gripped the cashier by the throat. ‘I will show you how to fucking rob people.’ Tossing the trembling man to one side, Tate had then ransacked the till and made off with approximately £150. Less than 24 hours later, both Tate and Sarah Saunders had been arrested for robbery. Tate quite rightly told the police that Sarah had had no involvement in what he called his ‘dispute with the restaurant staff’, and so she was released without charge. Tate, on the other hand, was charged with robbery and taken to Billericay Magistrates Court, where the police recommended that he should be kept in prison until his trial because of the severity of the offence. Tate, being the man he was, had made other plans.

When the magistrate asked Tate to stand up to hear his fate, he hit one guard full in the face with the back of his left hand, and pushed the other onto the floor. Vaulting the dock, Tate raced towards the exit doors but several police officers stood in his way in an attempt to stop him. The sheer size of Tate sent two of them sprawling as he collided with the human wall and another was punched so hard he was rendered unconscious before he even hit the floor. Outside the court entrance a high-powered motorbike awaited Tate’s arrival. Its engine purred as the driver kept nervously glancing over his shoulder, but as soon as Tate mounted the machine it roared into life and disappeared down Billericay High Street in a cloud of blue exhaust smoke. A few days later, Tate surfaced in Spain where he planned to work alongside costa del crooks, smuggling cannabis from Morocco into mainland Europe.

Initially, Tate was welcomed with open arms by the expats but after a few weekends of witnessing Tate’s drug-induced bad behaviour his potential partners began to avoid him. Likewise the Spanish authorities, who were prepared to suffer the presence of British fugitives, would not tolerate having local people terrorised by them. Eventually, both the police and the British criminal fraternity in residence made it clear to Tate that he was not welcome and would have to leave. Unable to understand why others were not prepared to have fun and run amok, Tate went in search of amusement across the border in Gibraltar where he was promptly arrested by British police officers. Three days later, Tate waved goodbye to his place of exile in the sun after being deported to languish in a cell on D Wing of HMP Chelmsford.

Prison life is the ultimate head fuck; the days are long and unbelievably monotonous. You wake up at 0700 hrs and have breakfast at 0800 hrs. Lunch is served at 1300 hrs and tea at 1600 hrs. An hour or so later, you’re allowed out of your cell for a piss and then you’re generally locked up again until the following morning. If you’re lucky, you are given a job sewing mail bags or carrying out some other equally tedious task. If you’re very lucky, you get a job with the cleaners, in the kitchen or as a gym orderly. Employment in any of the latter departments not only gets you out of your cell more often, it opens a window of opportunity for you to have small perks and get involved in wheeling and dealing contraband. Those who work in the kitchen sell food and the ingredients inmates use to make alcohol. Cleaners sell spare clothing and additional bedding, and those that work in the gym offer the most important product of all – lines of communication.

Often inmates involved in the same case are put onto different wings within a prison, to prevent them from manufacturing stories for use in their defence. Others are separated because one inmate may be intent on giving evidence against another. Prisons have just one gymnasium and, therefore, all inmates do, at some stage, come into contact with the gym orderlies. Case papers, handwritten notes, verbal messages, threats or even physical violence can be dished out to inmates for a fee by those working in the gymnasium. As soon as Tate arrived in Chelmsford prison, he was given a job as a gym orderly. Normally, inmates join a long queue for consideration for this prestigious post but Tate’s physique and domineering presence ensured that he wasn’t subjected to, what he considered to be, such a pointless process. One inmate did complain about Tate’s appointment being unfair but he later retracted the allegation in a letter of apology from the hospital wing. Apparently, he saw the folly of his protest after falling backwards down a flight of stairs.

I worked as a cleaner on the wing and this job provided me with the opportunity to attend the gym regularly, as I was rarely locked in my cell. Since I took a genuine interest in a training regime, fitness fanatic Tate took an interest in me. At that time in his life Patrick Tate was an incredibly thoughtful and genuinely nice guy. A bit boisterous perhaps, without doubt hyperactive, but regardless of these failings Tate would do anything for anybody that he liked. One of my duties as a wing cleaner was to take a trolley containing inmates’ possessions to and from the prison reception area. Tate immediately recognised that my job was a business opportunity and gave me contraband to smuggle from one area of the prison to another.

When parcels are posted in to prisoners from their friends and families, they are checked by security and if any banned items are found they are kept with the prisoners’ property in reception until they are due to be released. Tate arranged to have a packet of hacksaw blades posted in to him, which were immediately seized by security and placed in his property. Tate then asked me to steal the blades from his property box in reception and smuggle them onto the wing.

‘What the fuck are you going to do with them? Saw through the bars and escape?’ I asked as I handed them over to Tate.

‘No, you will find out soon enough,’ Tate replied, laughing. The following morning, Tate informed a senior prison officer that he knew hacksaw blades had been hidden on the wing and were going to be used in an escape bid by inmates. The entire prison was immediately locked down and searched. Eventually, the blades were found in a store cupboard and Tate was hailed as some sort of hero by the prison staff. It was a feather in Tate’s cap and, as a reward for his ‘honesty and assistance’, he was made a ‘trustie’ by the prison officers.

Unfortunately for me, during the search for the blades, officers had found 180 fresh raw eggs that I had stolen from the kitchen and hidden in my cell. They were not for my sole consumption; bodybuilders in the jail used to pay good money for them as they are high in protein. As Tate enjoyed his hero status, I was led away to the solitary confinement block after being charged with theft. The following morning, the inmate who brought my breakfast to my cell told me that Tate had said that I had to plead ‘not guilty’ to the charge of theft.

‘Don’t ask questions. Just trust Tate and you will be OK,’ the man said. ‘He is going to be in court soon for robbery and escaping from custody to Spain. As he knows that he’ll lose his trustie status when he’s sentenced Tate has said that he’ll say the eggs were his.’

‘Tell Tate thanks, but I will plead guilty as I stole them,’ I replied.

It was hardly the crime of the century but Tate’s offer was an extremely generous one and very much appreciated. Tate considered my reluctance to accept an easy way out of my predicament as the mark of an honourable man and one that he could trust. I think that incident, albeit trivial, did bring us together as friends and undoubtedly a bond was formed. I didn’t know it at the time, but Tate was allowed to read inmates’ confidential files when a certain prison officer was on duty. The officer, who felt intimidated by Tate, would turn a blind eye while he would slip into the landing office and read up on anybody he had suspicions about. I was told that after I had refused Tate’s offer to take the blame for me, that he had read my file just in case I was an informant and part of some elaborate plot to befriend him and learn his darkest secrets. There was nothing on my file to indicate that I had ever co-operated with the authorities and so his fears were proved to be unfounded. Once established as firm friends, Tate and I would spend most of the day together training in the gym. I was initially concerned that I was neglecting my prison duties and would lose my job but Tate told me not to worry as he would square everything with the staff. True to his word, Tate made it clear to all concerned that if he and I were allowed to train when we wanted and for as long as we wanted, he wouldn’t be disruptive, something nobody in their right mind would want.

In March 1991, I appeared at Chelmsford Crown Court charged with armed robbery. I pleaded ‘not guilty’ but accepted that I was guilty of handling stolen goods, namely the briefcase and its contents that Malcolm and I had tried to dispose of at the landfill site. There was a lot of hand-wringing and muttering but eventually the prosecution accepted my plea and dropped the robbery charge. For possessing stolen goods I was sentenced to three months’ imprisonment but I had spent longer than that in custody awaiting trial and so I was released immediately. Despite the euphoria I felt at being a free man once more, I vowed never to forget my friend Tate and so within days of my release I was back at the prison visiting him.

I would take Tate anything that he needed and assist his girlfriend Sarah in any way that I was asked. When I wasn’t attending to my friend’s needs or chaperoning Sarah, I was out and about in the Essex badlands committing crime with Malcolm. He, too, had eventually stood trial for the alleged robbery but after mimicking me and pleading guilty to handling stolen goods, he had spent only a few weeks in custody. While I had been marking time in HMP Chelmsford Malcolm had been busy relieving local businesses of their hard-earned cash and stock. The work required two men and so in my absence he had recruited an up-and-coming wannabe gangster named Damon Alvin. Everybody who came into contact with Alvin was wary of him because he would do practically anything to win a dispute. For instance, at the tender age of ten he had been arrested for arson after a building had been burned down. Apparently the owner of the torched house had somehow upset Alvin and he had vowed to pay him back.

Alvin occasionally attended Our Lady of Lourdes Catholic School in Leigh-on-Sea, and one of his closest friends there was Malcolm’s younger brother Kevin. Alvin would often visit the Walsh’s family home and it was there that he had become acquainted with Malcolm. Despite Alvin’s being just eleven years of age at the time and Malcolm seven years his senior, members of the Walsh family have described the pair as inseparable. Three years after his arrest for arson, the smouldering embers of Alvin’s criminal career were reignited when, under Malcolm’s guidance, he chose burglary as a profession. It was a trade that Malcolm taught Alvin both quickly and well. Aged 15, Alvin had announced to his long-suffering parents that he was not only leaving school but home as well because he said he was bored. Owing to the antisocial hours that Malcolm and Alvin were forced to work, Malcolm decided that it would be beneficial if Alvin moved into his home. The pair were soon breaking into other people’s property more often than morning was breaking to signal the dawn of a new day. They would burgle two or three industrial units or shops per night and spend their days selling the goods they had stolen to villains throughout Essex. As Alvin’s bank balance swelled, so too did his ego. Anybody foolish enough to displease him was punished with a merciless beating. On one occasion, he stabbed an off-duty soldier three times simply because he had made a comment about the West Ham United Football Club hat that Alvin was wearing. In another incident, Alvin struck an elderly man in the face after he had complained about litter being thrown into his garden. The man told police that Alvin had hit him with a pickaxe handle and the force with which he had hit the ground had broken his ankle.

A few months later, Alvin and four others were arrested after two men had been found: one having been punched, kicked and beaten with sticks as he lay on the ground, and the other stabbed. Alvin was not some sort of Neanderthal man who dragged his knuckles around the streets of Southend beating people up at his leisure. On the contrary, Alvin was known to be a clever, cunning and devious individual. He would seek out the weak or defenceless members of society to use or assault, simply because he wanted to create the impression that he was a force to be reckoned with. I cannot say for certain why I disliked Alvin so much because he never said anything he shouldn’t have to me. There was, however, undoubtedly something about him that made me feel uncomfortable in his presence. He was forever asking questions about people I knew or places I went: questions no person, other than someone with an ulterior motive, would bother to ask. Another thing I disliked about him was the fact that the only thing that appeared to matter in Damon Alvin’s life was Damon Alvin. He was a selfish bastard. I was never rude to Alvin because, after all, he was Malcolm’s friend, but I never went out of my way to make him feel welcome either.