Gypsy Jane - I've Been Shot Four Times and Served Three Prison Terms?This is the Incredible Story of (6 page)

‘Get fucking down, you ponce!’ I screamed.

It was almost funny. My middle-man had said I was dealing with proper gangsters but here we were, the boss had pissed himself with fear and his boys were crying. So these were the Essex boys, I thought. What a joke. But now I could hear sirens. I told my man to go out and get the car. His brother was now acting like Al Capone, bless him. I didn’t blame him. It was like something out of a film and he was loving every minute of this. Everybody was frozen, wanting me to leave before the law arrived. I backed away towards the door, still holding my guns on them as our car pulled up outside. On the way out I said, ‘I’m giving you one week – and only one week – to return my money. Yous aren’t gangsters. Yous are a load of cardboard cutouts. Proper men don’t have people over and they definitely don’t cry or piss themselves. You think I’d put my freedom on the line for scum like yous to take away what is mine? I’d die first. One week.’

With that, I was gone. I don’t know what they told the coppers when they arrived. If they had any sense, which, to be honest, was asking a lot, they would have been out of there. When we got back home, Matt was waiting. I didn’t know how he knew but word must have got out
that something had gone down and Matt looked proper worried. In a way, that was when I knew he loved me. I planned to say nothing and act all surprised at him being there, while trying to keep my guns hidden inside my jacket. I knew he would not be happy about what has just gone down.

‘What are you doing here, handsome?’ I said. I could see he wasn’t going to have it but, before I could say anything else, Al Capone blew it for me.

‘You should have seen her, Matt. She blew a hole through the ceiling and put them all on the floor. The boss pisses himself. She’s knocked his teeth out when she’s smashed the gun in his mouth. Then we’ve done one and she’s given them a week to pay or else it’s more of the same. They were shitting themselves. I’ve never seen anything like it, her being a bird an’ all.’ I gave him a bit of a look at that last bit because I hadn’t met a man who was my match yet, apart from the big man standing in front of me.

Al Capone’s words hadn’t gone down too well with Matt. I knew he still wanted me to be a normal woman. The middle-man was smirking but not for long. ‘I can’t believe my own ears,’ Matt said, grabbing him by the throat, his face contorted with rage. ‘What do yous think is funny?’ I could see the anger in his face and that was why I had told them not to say anything but Al Capone just hadn’t been able to help it.

I started to calm Matt down, pulling him off the middle-man. ‘It’s not their fault, babe,’ I pleaded.

‘Don’t you get it, Jane? I love you,’ he said. ‘I’ll take care of you from now on and John too. I don’t want you to go to work. I don’t want you dealing in drugs and I definitely don’t want you running around with guns and shooting pubs up.’

But I told him to stop worrying because that was what I did and all I knew. But he was fuming and told the middle-man and his brother to leave us, and they did. By now they couldn’t wait to get away from Matt. He had that sort of effect on people.

We started to argue. ‘You’re not doing no more deals. You’re not going to work. I just want to love you!’ he screamed. ‘You’re going to end up dead or doing a life sentence. Please, Jane, let me provide for you. I’ll pay you not to work and everything you need, I’ll get it for you.’

I loved this man with all my heart by now and he gave me two choices – my old life or him. I so wanted to be cared for and loved by a man who could truly be my everything. My knight in shining armour. No man had ever given me anything. I had always supported myself and I still could. I was always the one who was the provider and it felt like a dream come true for somebody, at last, to have come along and rescued me from this world of crime and villains. It wasn’t the money, as I had plenty of that myself because I’d made a small fortune doing the beer run. It was the love, the care and the passion that made me want this man like I’d never wanted any man before. I chose Matt.

Matt moved in and I stopped doing the beer run but I hadn’t forgotten about my money. A week went by and I still hadn’t had it back. While Matt was at work one day, I went and saw a man who knew the Essex mob. He told me they owned a dry cleaner in Harold Hill but he had now heard about Matt and was more than worried about him. Matt had already warned people that they would have to answer to him if they got me involved in trouble. He said he didn’t want to be the one to take me to them but I wasn’t interested in listening to his excuses. I told him he was taking me to them. He said Matt would kill him. I just pulled out my Browning, put it to his head and told the poor sod, ‘Yeah but I’ll kill you first.’

When we got to the dry cleaner, my man begged me to let him go in first to try to sort it out without violence. I agreed. But when he came out, he had a worried look on his face. They had just done a runner out the back door. I wasn’t amused. I went in that shop and smashed the place to pieces. I was fuming because I hadn’t thought they were total cowards and would do a runner like that. After hiding my guns back in the usual place, I returned home.

When Matt got home, I said, ‘I’m going to have to do the Essex mob. It’s been a week and I still ain’t got my money and they definately ain’t getting away with it.’ I knew this business wasn’t going to end well and I had to tell him what was going to happen, out of respect. That put him in a bad mood straight away.

‘No, you’re not going to do anyone,’ he said. ‘You promised not to get into more trouble. I’ll sort them out.’ I agreed. I owed him that much.

Matt went out that night with a mate and a few hours later he came back with my money. I was over the moon. I thought I’d end up having to do someone but now it was done thanks to him. But at the same time, I knew that being a kept woman didn’t work for me. Matt wanted to be with me all the time. The problem was that I found it hard to change overnight, just like that. The more Matt was trying to rein me in, the less I liked it. I could have coped with the love and care he gave me but it was the control I couldn’t handle. I had gone from being my own person to him owning me and it wasn’t long before things started to change for the worse.

Matt got so controlling that it was unbearable. He stopped all my friends coming over. He didn’t like any of them and he kept telling me they weren’t my friends and that they didn’t really like me. They were just using me, he would say. I was cracking up mentally over it. I wasn’t allowed out. I wasn’t allowed to have visitors and I felt like he was psychologically destroying me. All he did was put me down. The clothes I wore weren’t right, the way I had my hair wasn’t right and he said everything and anything he could think of was wrong with me. He did it in such a nice and loving way that I felt he was right. A part of me believed him but the other part of me was fighting it all the way. I really did try to be everything he wanted me to be. He said that he
wanted to buy a house in the middle of the forest for me, him and John so that nobody could come near us. Oh, how I tried to be his everything but, in my heart, I knew it wouldn’t work. I wanted so badly to stop being a criminal and be the woman Matt wanted but I couldn’t. And what’s more, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t be his prisoner at any price. My heart was breaking.

I worried about my independence and how I would cope if it all ended tomorrow with Matt. So, while I didn’t take up the beer run again, I was still doing little deals on puff and Billy without him knowing about it. It wasn’t easy. As part of the way he was controlling me, he had said I was too good to do housework and had got one of his mates to do it. This was just his way of keeping an eye on me. I started to resent it because I felt like he was checking up on me in my own home. I went from doing everything for myself to doing nothing apart from a few deals when Matt was out of the house.

He would say, ‘All I want you to do is sit there, look gorgeous and do your nails.’ But there was more to life than that. And there was more to me. I kept on with my own bits of business, not least because I knew that one day I would return to my old life and would need something to fall back on.

Inevitably, one day he came home early while I was just about to do a little deal. I had to wait for him to fall asleep in the afternoon and then I was off out the door. All the way back I prayed he hadn’t woken up. I crept back in but it was too late – he was already out looking
for me. I was going to get into bother again when he got back. I had to think fast. When he returned, I told him I’d been at a car-boot fair. I even had some shopping to make it look good but he wasn’t stupid. He knew what I’d been up to and went mad, chucking the shopping all over the street and barring me from going out at all.

‘What happens to your son when you get blown away or a life sentence?’ he raged. ‘You don’t care, do you?’

To tell you the truth, I never thought about getting shot or caught. I never looked at that possibility. By now I thought I was untouchable – a dangerous way to think but, at that time, that was how I felt. But I also knew that Matt was just trying to possess and control me, which was a completely new experience. The gypsy in me was a wild and free spirit and I just couldn’t handle it. It wasn’t right and I wasn’t having it, no matter what the consequences. It wasn’t that Matt wasn’t worth it. He was but the word ‘compromise’ didn’t enter either of our heads. I fought against him all the way and the rows got worse.

He kept me indoors for about three months after that incident, saying I couldn’t be trusted. I wasn’t even allowed to go out to the shops. I was getting really down and couldn’t handle it. So I did a runner. I went to the house of a mate who Matt didn’t know. I knew Matt would go out looking for me. And anyone who was hiding me would find themselves in trouble too. I was gone for three days before I rang Matt and he pleaded with me to come home. I had to admit I was missing him
so, against my better judgment, I decided to return. I phoned a cab, thanked my mate for letting me stay and set off for home. When I reached my house, Matt was waiting outside and I could already see he’d got the right hump. Even as the cab pulled up, I could see he was going to start on me so I told the cab driver, ‘Go, go, go! Or this geezer will kill me.’ The cab started to take off and Matt started running after us – a sight to put the fear of God into anyone. So the cabby stopped.

I jumped out and Matt ran past me, opened the driver’s door and grabbed the driver by the throat. ‘Where did you pick her up from?’ And the cabby told him. I already knew I was in trouble but now I knew I could have got my mate in the worst trouble of his life. You see, I was learning that nobody went against Matt and got away with it. Hiding his missus from him was bad news for my mate. I was losing it by now. I should have known that Matt wasn’t going to let me get away with running away. I was losing my touch. I might have bought a lot of trouble to my mate, although, in the end, it seemed to blow over.

Matt shouted and screamed at me but never hit me. He would never do that because he loved me so much. He had once grabbed me by the hair and I’d hit him over the head with a metal bar. The bar just bounced off him. I’m serious. He was a hard, hard man. He just took a deep breath, shook his head and said, ‘That hurt.’ But I felt like I had just smashed the bar into a concrete post. I knew it was just as well he loved me too much to hit me as one
punch from him would have killed me. The only way to beat him would have been to shoot him and I would never have done that. I loved him and, although he was controlling, I knew it was out of the love he had for me. He would blame others and lash out at them before getting to me, and he was so proud of me. When I got dressed up and we went out to dinner, he loved it but, when the other blokes looked at me, we would start to row, as if it was my fault. He bragged to his mates about how gorgeous I was but it also made him possessive. That was the problem.

Some time later we were off in the Porsche to see some posh people he had done a bit of business with. I got a McDonald’s on the way because I was starving. When we were nearly there, he said, ‘Jane, don’t show me up. Get rid of that Big Mac.’ So I chucked it into a bin before I had even finished it. ‘And don’t talk when we’re there. Your voice is so common. Let me do the talking.’

I was shocked. He had made me feel cheap. But I agreed. ‘OK, babe. I won’t say a word,’ I said. But I was fuming. I’d had enough of being controlled by now.

We pulled up and got out of the car and this polite, posh man came over to greet us. He shook Matt’s hand and said, ‘Hello,’ and then he turned to me. ‘And who is this gorgeous creature?’

I just looked at him. ‘Don’t fucking talk to me, you ponce,’ I sneered. Nodding at Matt, I added, ‘He’s just told me I’m not good enough to speak to you so yous had better not speak to me.’ It shit him right up.
Who is manipulating who now? I thought. Well, Matt just grabbed me by the hair and dragged me back into the car.

‘Shut the fuck up, you mad bitch!’ he screamed.

‘How did I do?’ I asked him, laughing my head off. ‘Common enough for you, babe? I think it went very well. I think they were very impressed and we’ll definitely be asked round again soon. Don’t you, darling?’

He was fuming but so was I. I was always very respectful to people. I treated them how they treated me and I wasn’t going to be told I wasn’t good enough. Not even by my Matt. He knew he was wrong, in his heart. And he also knew it wasn’t in me to be diplomatic. When God made me, he left that bit out. If you want to insult me, you had better be ready for what’s coming back because you can be sure that it’s definitely coming.

Then one day, early in the morning, the front door came crashing through without any warning. It was the law. Matt and I had been fast asleep. As we laid in bed Matt whispered to me, ‘You’ve got nothing in here, have you? No gear, no guns?’

‘No,’ I lied.

I had the hand guns and rifles, which I owned legally, and I had my collection of Colt pistols in the safe. Now, they were all fully legal because they were over a hundred years old and classed as antiques. And my bullet-making gear in the safe was also legal because it was made up of legal components. The police were there for about six hours and they didn’t find anything at all. But they did,
at one point, ask me what was in the safe and, when I told them, ‘Guns,’ it threw them a bit. I told them I was a collector and they opened the safe and, of course, all the guns were in there. I told them they were all legal but they still took them out and said that, if they were legal, I would get them all back later on. Apart from that, they didn’t find anything so we were safe.