Gypsy Jane - I've Been Shot Four Times and Served Three Prison Terms?This is the Incredible Story of (5 page)

After a while the beer run started to take its toll on me physically and I was starting to fall asleep at the wheel. But I wanted to keep getting the money in while the going was good. There was no way I wanted to slow down now I was on top. Like a mug, I started taking speed to keep me awake, going for days without sleep. I’m not making excuses. All I can say is that it worked. It made more sense than one of the staff at a warehouse in France I used, who tried to have me over on the money. I mean, they tried to steal from me and for a little while they got away with it. You see, they had these counting machines that checked you had paid them the right amount. There was no need, from my point of view. I would always check the amount before I left home in the morning. When I got there, I would just give it to them and they would stick it in their machine and it was always right. But one day there was a new bloke taking the money. I had given him £1,500 and he put it in the machine, then said I was £40 short. This was a first but I was tired because I’d been doing two trips a day for
months now and I was lucky to get fifteen hours sleep a week. So I put this down to tiredness, apologised and gave him the difference.

But on the next trip the same thing happened. ‘You are £60 short this time,’ he said. I gave him the extra but I wasn’t amused. I knew I hadn’t made two mistakes on the trot and I was certain he was having me over. If there were two things I never got wrong, it was what I had to pay out and what I got in. But I just suffered again, although I know I should have counted the money by hand in front of him. So I took that one on the chin but I made up my mind he wouldn’t do me again.

Two of my mates counted the money with me before I left for the next trip. One at a time we each did it. And it was there, every penny. When I got to France, I gave this bloke the money and he put it in the machine and, lo and behold, it was £40 short. I already knew what I was going to do. My sword was sheathed inside my bomber jacket in the middle of my back. I reached round for the handle over my shoulder and pulled it out. You should have seen his face. I didn’t say anything. I just chopped him across his shoulder and he fell to the floor, screaming like a pig. I didn’t want to kill him but I did want to hurt him and show him what happens to lying thieves. He’d thought that because I was a woman he could have me over. The idiot. Out of everyone using the place, all the men, I was the worst and most dangerous person to have over.
And he had just found that out the hard way. There were about eight men behind me waiting to be served but they just bowed their heads. Not one of them said a word to me.

My beer had been loaded so I grabbed the money, jumped in my van, where Tracey was already sitting, hid my sword and put my foot down because now I needed to get out of France. I had known what I was going to do to him but it wasn’t until I’d done it that I realised what an idiot I’d been. I mean, I was in France and I had just stabbed a Frenchman, and now I had to get back to England sharpish. Yet I didn’t regret what I’d done for a moment. I was old school and I didn’t call the police – not that I was in a position to. I dealt with it myself. That was my way. You fucked with me, I would be your judge, jury and executioner. As it was, I made it home without any problem from the police. I reckoned the guy I stabbed was about as interested in calling them as I was. And I like to think I was the last person he played that dirty trick on.

There were about 50 vans in line for the journey back over the Channel but, while mine was old, it was special. The last owner had been a police officer so, accidentally on purpose, I left his name on the paperwork. I thought it might make me untouchable. What copper is going to pull another copper? As we waited to get home, the van in front of me started rolling backwards and hit us. I was with a good mate and said, ‘Look at this idiot. He’s going to hit us.’ It
seemed very funny – I mean, hysterical – by the time it hit us because I was high on puff. The man got out of his van. I was nearly crying with laughter when I said, ‘You hit us but don’t worry, there’s no damage.’ I couldn’t even get out of the van I was laughing so much. But he was looking a bit puzzled.

Then he said, ‘No, love. Vans don’t roll up hill. You’ve hit me.’ That finished us off. We just couldn’t stop laughing. It was the puff. We were out of it and it was only luck that we didn’t get pulled over. The bloke just walked away shaking his head and, fortunately, laughing to himself. There was no harm done. We laughed for weeks afterwards over that.

Another time, we were on the train, fully loaded, during the day and we went to the toilet. When we got back to the van, there were about 20 men up against the van pushing it. I’d forgotten to put the handbrake on and it had rolled into a convertible BMW, denting the back end. I apologised to the owner of the car but he said, ‘That’s OK, sweetheart. My motor’s only an old peace of shit. No real harm done.’ Flash git, I thought to myself. A motor worth £25,000 and he’s calling it a ‘piece of shit’.

When we once had 500 cases of lager in the van, a friend and I were driving home and all of a sudden there was a massive crashing noise. I had fallen asleep. We had veered out of our lane and hit road cones in the middle of a section of road works – and thank God we did because, if we had stayed in our lane, we would have
driven into the stationary traffic ahead and probably been killed. Instead, we were in the works lane smashing cones all over the motorway. We were suddenly wide awake and I couldn’t get out of the works lane because there were cones stuck under the van and everyone was looking. I just looked at my friend and drove right through them. It did us a favour really because we missed all the traffic and got off the motorway. But it was scary too. When we got home, we still had a cone under the van but I was so exhausted that I just went to bed.

I could only think that the Billy wasn’t working as well it had, as there is only so much your body can take before it needs rest. I was working constantly and battling through the exhaustion. It wasn’t just the money. By now people were relying on me to get their orders in. We were lucky we hadn’t died that night but the Billy took those thoughts away and it was all about getting the job done.

On the next trip the van decided to break down on the way home. It was fully loaded, we were on the M20 on a steep hill and the van was doing about five miles an hour before it died on us. We were nearly at the top of the hill on the hard shoulder when it overheated for the last time. The journey was just getting too much for the old vehicle. So we let it cool down a bit. We kept trying to start it again but it wasn’t having it. I stuck it in reverse, took my foot off the brake and let it roll backwards down the hill. We
were going backwards on the hard shoulder of the M20 at about 50 miles an hour, fully loaded. It was flying – but in the wrong direction. There were lorries flying past us with drivers just gawping in amazement at how fast a Transit van could go in reverse down a hill. But we were terrified and those drivers must have been too, seeing us heading in their direction at breakneck speed. I mean, we could have veered across into their path at any second. We were in big trouble. If I couldn’t keep it in a straight line, we were dead. But, amazingly, I got it to bottom of the hill and we rolled to a stop. I tried to start it again but the engine was still dead. We could see a petrol station in the far distance across fields and hills.

I said we had to get to the garage to get some water for the radiator but my mate replied, ‘Leave it out, Jane. I’m knackered and it looks miles away.’

I told her to stop being a baby. ‘You’re a soldier tonight, girl. We’ve got a dodgy load of booze so we’ve got to get this van started and get home or we could end up being nicked.’ We climbed the barrier into the fields, walked through a forest, got to the garage and she had been right. It was a lot further than it looked. Even then we had to wait two hours for it to open. We bought loads of bottles of water and went back to the van and poured the water into the radiator. And, thank God, it started and we headed home.

What a life we were having. It was hard work and
scary when we broke down in the middle of the night. But we were earning and we were surviving. That’s life, I thought to myself as we got back to Essex.

I
hardly know where to begin telling you about Matt. It sounds like a cliche and it is a cliche but he was the love of my life. As usual with me and men, things took a turn for the worse but it is true to say that Matt is still in my heart and will be until the day I die. I can’t see any other man changing that now. I wasn’t to know when I met him on a fine summer’s day in the Kent countryside in 1995 that he would become such a massive part of my life, and that the end of our love affair would lead me to plot four murders. And I couldn’t know then that he himself would meet a violent end and throw my world into turmoil. But by now violence was becoming an occupational hazard with me. The world I was in was the only one that
offered me a way to support John and, as far as I was concerned, that was the end of it.

One day, on the way back from France, I popped in to my mate’s house in Kent for a cup of tea and a chat, just to break the journey up and – wow! – there was Matt standing in the front room. He was big, strong looking and handsome, and he had an air about him. Confidence, I suppose you would call it. He was sure of himself, all right. You know, looking back now, I think it was love at first sight but, given everything I had been through with men, I wasn’t about to admit that to myself straight away. I mean, I’d only popped in for a cup of tea and my knees had gone weak and my heart was going pitter-pat. I had to fight it. I pretended not to like Matt in the beginning. As it was, I mistook that
self-confidence
for arrogance at first. And I’d been let down by men who thought that, just because I was a bird, they had something over on me. By now I knew different and was behaving accordingly at every opportunity. No bloke was going to dominate me just because he was male. He had to have something to back it up. I was no pushover. I wanted the love and care that so many other women had and, above all, I needed real loyalty because it was betrayal that had ruined all my past relationships.

Matt was a giant, yet as calm as you like. He was waiting for some Billy, which hadn’t arrived and, when I got there, he was having a bit of a moan. He was saying to my pal, ‘You’re bloody useless, mate. Where’s my gear? I got people to see and places to go. I can’t be
sitting around here all day chewing the fat with you. Know what I mean, son?’

It was as if I wasn’t even in the room. I thought to myself, he fancies himself a bit. I wouldn’t let him talk to me like that. But at the same time, I couldn’t take my eyes off him. I was just about to pipe up in my mate’s defence and it was as if my mate could read my mind – he gave me a look. It was a kind of gesture which said, ‘Leave it, Jane. Don’t mess with this geezer.’ Well, I was dealing in a bit of Billy in those days and, since I could see the problem, I thought I could help him out and I knew my mate knew that. So I bit my tongue until he gave me the nod.

‘Jane here might be able to help you out, Matt,’ my mate said. Can you do my very good friend Matt here a quarter-kilo of speed, Jane?’

Well, that cheered me up straight away and I agreed, especially as I’d only popped in for a cup of tea. That was a £1,250 deal and a nice little earner. I told him I was putting £500 on top as my earner but Matt insisted on giving me £750 – well over the odds – for helping him out of a spot. I liked his style. Even so, I told Matt I thought he was a bit full of himself. ‘But now that I’ve earned this money off you, I must say, you’re not that bad, are you?’ I joked.

‘If I’m not that bad, can I take you out then?’ he came back as quick as you like and I agreed immediately. I couldn’t see the point in pretending. I had never met a man I had felt so instantly attracted to. He was direct
and I liked that in a man. He took after my own heart. We exchanged phone numbers and Matt said he would call me in a couple of days. I was excited by him. I could tell he was dangerous and cocksure. And, of course, he was a villain. But I had done the loyal mother-
and-provider
bit for so long that I reckoned I was entitled to bit of excitement. I was tingling all over when he left but I tried not to show it.

‘Listen, Jane, I know you like him,’ my mate said. ‘The electricity in the room as soon as you walked in said it all. But Matt is a bloody nutter so you are going to have to be careful of him. I don’t want to see you get hurt.’

I said to my mate, ‘He’s a nutter? What about me? I’m a bloody nutter too and he might need to be careful of me. Anyway, he is just the way I like them… big and good looking and with a bit about him.’ And, oh my, did Matt have a bit about him. He was six-foot-six and twenty-five stone of solid muscle. Now I know that may be hard to believe but that was him. He trained at his own gym all the time and he had muscles everywhere. They used to say he had muscles on his ears. Think of Arnold Schwarzenegger and you begin to get the idea. He had a home in Kent, near Ashford, but I think he spent more time in the gym than he did at home, to be honest. All he told me was that he came from Omagh, in County Tyrone, Northern Ireland but had settled in Kent. He bought and sold expensive sports cars, dealt in drugs, had a little security operation for clubs and gigs
and kept Alsatians and a rottweiler. He had his fingers in a few pies and was doing very well for himself.

So that is how I met my Matt – doing a drug deal for a quarter-kilo of Billy in the Kent countryside. Or should I say, Mad Matt? That was his nickname because there was nothing he wouldn’t do. He was fearless and a bit crazy with it. Two days later he rang me and we made a date. It was my 29th birthday in a couple of days so we decided to go out and celebrate.

On my birthday he pulled up outside my place in a Porsche. A Porsche! And because I told him on the phone I was into antiques, he had bought me a few things for my birthday. In fact, his car was full of presents – among them a beautiful bunch of red roses. My favourite flower. I couldn’t believe it. He made me feel so special. I felt on top of the world and I thought my dad was going to be so proud of me. I knew Matt was a villain but that was my life and Dad knew it too. Matt took me to a beautiful restaurant in Kent. I hadn’t felt like this about anybody for a long time. After the meal we went back to my place and I couldn’t believe the words I was hearing. ‘I’ve had a wonderful time, Jane,’ he said to me. ‘You’re not like all the rest. You are so beautiful and you’ve got some personality on you. I never know what you are going do or say next and I like that. I like it a lot.’ He took me up to my bedroom and we made love. After the years of struggle and disappointment, I let everything go. For that night I was a woman who didn’t have to be strong anymore. I knew
I was falling in love big time and, boy, did I feel happy about it.

Those first few weeks went particularly well. He treated me like a lady whenever we met and, not only did I adore him, but I looked up to him because of the way he conducted himself. He never went looking for any trouble but you had that feeling he could handle it if it came looking for him. He lived in Kent and I was still busy doing the beer run so it is wasn’t even as if we had to be in each other’s pockets, which I think was a good thing in those early days. I also thought that one of the first rules of falling in love was never to mix business with pleasure but, with me and Matt, things were a little bit different because it was business that brought us together – the drugs business, that is. But then it did cause a problem.

He asked me for some more Billy but I didn’t have enough. He wanted a kilo and my usual contacts didn’t have that amount of gear. Matt played in the big league compared to me, I’ve got to be honest here. And that was one of the things that impressed me about him. I fancied him, all right. He brought excitement. I didn’t want to let him down so I had to go through another contact, which I didn’t like doing, normally. But I set it up and the new guy gave me a sample of the gear and it was good. So I did the deal and got the gear for Matt and, after paying me for it, he took it back to Kent.

Everything seemed fine until Matt phoned me later that day. ‘This gear is shit, Jane,’ he said. ‘You’ve been
had over, which means I’ve been had over and I am not happy. I’m out five K. They gave me a good sample but then they switched the main delivery for a load of shit.’

I wasn’t happy at the news either. ‘Bring it back here, Matt,’ I said, ‘and I’ll give you your money back straight away.’

Matt came over and handed me the dodgy gear and I gave him his money back. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked.

‘I’ll sort it,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry.’

‘No, I’ll sort it. I don’t want you getting in too deep on my account. This could be trouble,’ he said, putting his hand on my shoulder, all protective.

I knew he meant well but my independence had become so important to me. I had learned to rely on myself through thick and thin and, as much as I was already coming to love and trust Matt I knew he wanted to look out for me, I found it hard to stop looking out for myself because that was how I had survived so far. I looked up at him with loving eyes and said, ‘Now, look here, lover boy, I’m a big girl and can handle it. How do you think I managed before you arrived on the scene? Leave it to me, Matt.’

But he wasn’t happy. In fact, that was the
understatement
of the century. Matt was old school and he didn’t want his bird doing what he thought was his job. It would be fair to say he had the right hump with me for turning down his offer of help and him having the hump was giving me the right hump too. We started to argue.
‘Tell me who they are!’ he shouted. ‘You aren’t going nowhere. I am not having my bird running around getting nicked.’

I wasn’t having it. ‘Now, listen to me, Matt. I don’t need your help or anybody else’s. Do you understand me? You can’t tell me what to do.’ He was fuming but he didn’t say another word and just stormed out of my house. I was upset but the last thing I wanted was more arguments. I had got myself into this mess and I would get myself out of it. The day I started letting other people fight my battles for me would be the day I stopped being me and I couldn’t have that. It would be bad all round. Matt still had a lot to learn about me.

I got my guns and I went to see the middleman who had done us over. Once in his house, I told him the gear wasn’t the same as the tester he gave me. I didn’t want to start off heavy. ‘I want my money back, mate, simple as that,’ I said. ‘I’m not happy. I’ve just rowed with my Matt over this.’ He looked scared but it wasn’t me he was worried about. He told me he hadn’t got my money and that he had bought the gear off someone else. He had been done over too.

‘Take me to them,’ I told him.

‘These are proper gangsters, Jane. I’m not too sure about fronting them about this. They’ll kill you. It’s some crew from Essex. There is nothing you or me can do.’

But I don’t scare that easily. ‘I don’t care if it’s the fucking Kray twins themselves who are behind what
has happened. No one’s having me over. Fucking take me to them.’

He couldn’t decide whether he was more scared of them or of my guns. In the end, he took me, bringing his brother along as muscle. We ended up at a pub and, while my middle-man went inside for a quick sneak preview, we waited for him to come back out. He told us there were about 30 of them in there. ‘Leave it, Jane. It’s fucking suicide. They’re drinking and tooled up. I know this crew. Leave it, babe.’

I didn’t hesitate. ‘Let’s get in there then,’ I said. I started walking and he followed me. Once again, I wasn’t sure if he was more frightened of me or them.

The gangsters were all in their suits, looking well flash. Me? I was in my army gear – combat trousers, DM boots, green T-shirt and bomber jacket. My 9mm Browning automatic pistol was in one pocket and my German Mauser pistol was in the other. My pal pointed out the boss and over I went.

I told him straight that I wanted my money back. ‘You sold shit gear to him,’ I said, nodding at my pal. ‘And he sold it to me and I sold it to someone very important to me. So give me my money back and we can call it quits.’

His boys all stopped what they were doing. I’d got their attention now. You might think I was frightened at this point or in over my head. But I felt totally in control, razor sharp and ready for them. I knew they wanted to have a go. Me being a bird, they would think I was easy but I was double ready. The boss’s boys were
looking a bit puzzled, as if to say, ‘Look at the brass neck on it.’ All the same, they started making to get their tools out. When the boss himself said, ‘Get this lady away from me,’ I knew it wasn’t going to be civilised. Yet I already knew I had one thing in my favour – his words meant he had underestimated me and I knew that also meant he was slow off the mark.

Before he had even finished speaking I’d pulled my 9mm Browning out of my jacket and blown a hole in the ceiling. While he and his crew were gazing at the damage, I stepped forward, smashed his front teeth out with the barrel of the gun and held it in his mouth. ‘I am no fucking lady, you piece of shit!’ I screamed like a mad bitch ready to shoot the lot of them. Everybody crouched down or hit the floor. Everyone apart from the boss, the middle-man and his brother, that was. ‘I want my money back now or I’m going to blow you away, then your mum and dad and all your fucking kids, you ponce!’ I screamed. Of course, I wouldn’t have hurt his family. But he wasn’t to know that.

Blood was pouring out of his mouth and all his hard boys were on the floor, just staring. Their eyes were darting from me, back to their boss and back to me again to me, as if to say, ‘What do we do now, boss?’ But their boss was just standing there, blood pouring from his mouth. A damp patch appeared on his trousers. He had started to wet himself. I heard a noise behind me.

I whipped out my Mauser while still holding the Browning in this so-called gangster’s mouth. I aimed at
the noise, keeping my eyes on the boss. When I glanced over, I saw that the disturbance had come from one of his boys – another wannabe gangster crawling from behind the pool table on the brink of tears. ‘Just give her back her money. It’s not worth it,’ he said.