Read The Iceman: The Rise and Fall of a Crime Lord Online
Authors: Jim Wilson
The Iceman: The Rise and Fall of a Crime Lord (10 page)
One detective who worked on the case said:
I got a call on the day after the shooting from a contact who supplied the full details about the fall-out between Stevenson and Tony. I reported this information to a detective inspector but he was not that interested. It was not until the following Monday morning when an assistant chief constable found out that it was taken seriously. The ACC realised that this was an ongoing vendetta which had the potential to become a lot more serious.
In the months that followed, there was more tit-for-tat violence. In the early hours of one Sunday in July, Cafe Cini in Greenock was torched. Just one year after its glitzy gangland opening, hundreds of people were having to flee from the McGovern-controlled style bar. All that remained as morning broke was a smouldering shell. Police warned staff to be prepared for similar attacks at other pubs in the Jimmy Nick’s chain. CCTV images showed the culprit to be a man who appeared to be of the same height and build as Stevenson but there was never enough evidence to make an arrest. The McGovern family did not require the same standard of proof – they knew who was behind the attack.
The escalating feud widened. Stevenson is devoted to his stepson Carbin who, at the time Tony was shot, was aged twenty-one. In the same year, a member of the McGovern crew brandished a gun in Stevenson’s stepson’s face at the Ashfield Club – the same venue in Possil where taxi driver Jimmy McHugh had been shot dead in 1995.
Following Tony’s eventual murder, one frustrated detective said:
There was an incident at the Ashfield Club. There was allegedly a firearm present. It’s a matter that still has to be resolved. Police were called to an incident at the time but we don’t have an official complaint. I’m aware that the person involved is the stepson of Jamie Stevenson. As to whatever exactly happened, I don’t know. There were few witnesses. It’s amazing how many people can get into a pub toilet at one time.
By the time Tommy stepped through the prison gates to freedom on 9 August, he finally understood the consequences of his refusal to pay his Liverpudlian drug debt. His stunt had propelled his family into all-out war. The most crucial act in this long hot summer of spiralling violence happened just days before Tony was shot at while in the shower. Indeed, it had been the catalyst for the attack.
Just four weeks before Tommy headed back to Springburn, Stevenson was persuaded to go for a drive in the country. He was not meant to return.
15
In the Jungle
It’s called Tak-Ma-Doon Road but the only thing about to be taken down that night was Jamie Stevenson. He had been told it was to be a meet, a drive north out of Glasgow to a secluded spot to discuss business with a trusted contact. It was July 2000 and the rendezvous was agreed in a bid to end his war with the McGoverns. He knew his companions and felt no need to go armed. It was almost a fatal mistake. Who, he thought, would try to kill you at a peace summit?
Leaving the north of the city through darkened back roads, the car headed into the countryside behind Kilsyth and parked up near a reservoir. Then a handgun was suddenly pulled, aimed and fired straight at Stevenson’s head. He tells people that the pistol jammed in the steady hand of the would-be assassin. Friends of those in the car that night say that a shot was fired but it merely burned their intended victim’s neck. They insist the injury was bad enough to later need hospital treatment but admit it was never life threatening.
Stevenson was shocked. Fight or flight? In a split-second, his human instinct for self-preservation to flee prevailed over a bare-handed attack on two men, one of whom was armed. He tumbled out of the car door, rolled over and then was back on his feet. Over a fence and into a field, he was running, the adrenaline thundering through his body. His would-be assassins followed him but lost him in the darkness.
After stumbling across the boggy fields of this unfamiliar rural Stirlingshire terrain, Stevenson eventually came to the house of a businessman acquaintance, a Glasgow publican. Entering the garden from the rear, he knew he had found a temporary haven but realised there would be no permanent safety until he had dealt with those who had tried to kill him – the McGoverns.
One of the men in the car that night was allegedly Terry Monaghan, an ‘elder statesman’ of Glasgow gangland and a man who had the authority and the trust to broker a potential deal between the McGoverns and their nemesis – in particular, he could do a deal that might save face on both sides and stop the war escalating to the stage where it would begin to hurt business.
Monaghan, however, is reluctant to go into exact details about the night when, allegedly, he, Stevenson and a third man, who is now in prison, went for a drive in the country. Perhaps he hoped that, having so much to deal with, Stevenson’s memory has begun to fade. When tracked down, Monaghan asked:
Is this anything to with a gun? Is it something to do with him getting shot in the back of the head? I wonder what happened there. I know that it was when Wimbledon was on. The police know about it – they’ll tell you. He had to go to hospital – it was a private hospital. Everyone can speculate and the dogs in the street seem to know that it is me.
A Monaghan ex-associate said:
After this happened, Terry was very worried about repercussions. Stevenson obviously trusted him enough to get into a car unarmed and head out the back roads while in the middle of a war with the McGoverns – not the kind of mistake you’d make twice.
Ironically, nine years earlier, Terry’s brother Abie, a promising footballer who, as a boy, had played alongside the legendary Kenny Dalglish, had been caught outside the Highland Fling with a samurai sword, as he was preparing to chop the head off one of the McGoverns.
A Stevenson associate said:
Jamie was not injured and he was not armed. If he had been, things would have been different. For years they ran together and worked together and Tony had been a proper friend, a china. Tony knew that Tommy was a loose canon but Stevenson knew that, if it ever came to the crunch, Tony would always side with his brothers. Even before the fall-out over Tommy bumping his Liverpool contacts for money, Stevenson had been growing apart from them.
Pushing his hands forward like train lines, he added:
Up until the late 1990s, they had worked together like that but there had been a gradual moving away even before this. Stevenson understood that the McGoverns would hold him back. They were liberty-takers – slashing people, stabbing people. Tommy was snorting most of their profits. The youngest brother Paul was about to come out of jail after doing his time for murdering the janitor and he would be looking for a piece of the action.
It might just have worked itself out if they hadn’t tried to kill Stevenson first but, after that, there was no going back. Stevenson felt bad about it but he knew it was him or them and he was not about to let it be him. It was both business and personal.
Stevenson felt bad about Tony and, after he died, he just said, ‘If you walk in the jungle, you had better be ready to bump into a tiger.’
Stevenson had been shocked by the attempt on his life. In the nights that followed, he admitted as much to one criminal associate at The Tunnel club in Glasgow, a venue where he and Tony had spent many happy times together.
Another close friend said:
He could not believe it when they tried to kill him out on the back roads. For several nights, he talked about it and he had tears in his eyes. At first, he didn’t know what to do but quickly realised there was only one course of action he could take. A few days later, Tony was shot in the shower.
Many in the police were already certain that one side or the other would suffer a fatality. Stevenson was undoubtedly dangerous but most observers thought that the McGovern brothers would ultimately triumph in this most brutal test of strength – after all, Stevenson was just one man. They thought wrong.
Tony was shot dead on the evening of 16 September 2000 while he was sitting at the wheel of his black Audi A6 which was parked outside the New Morven. It would be one of the most significant gangland murders for years and one that signalled an audacious gangland putsch.
In the days after McGovern was murdered, Stevenson trailed other members of the McGovern family, including the brothers and their parents, covertly taking their pictures. They were soon sent the photos in the post.
The associate recalls:
The McGoverns wanted revenge. They would have been baying for Stevenson’s blood but sometimes self-preservation comes before anything else. And, when they got those pictures, they got the message very quickly. They were feared but not respected and suddenly somebody wasn’t scared of them or what they might do. Stevenson took the war right into their backyard, into their heartlands, and away goals count double.
Another north Glasgow underworld figure said:
After Stevenson did what he did, the whole perception of the McGoverns changed. They were running about like headless chickens offering people money to do things for them but people asked why could they not do it themselves. Their reputation was in tatters, this entire facade of invincibility just melted away like ice.
Their plan had spectacularly backfired. In the countryside north of Glasgow, the damp shallow grave that lay open in readiness for Stevenson’s warm corpse would remain unfilled.
16
Vengeance
Big Duncan McIntyre asked the barmaid for another large vodka before scrutinising his palm for a coin to feed into the Thomson’s bar jukebox. McIntyre, a long-standing McGovern henchman, was mourning his good friend Tony.
For several weeks after the killing, his routine was the same. Each afternoon, he would steadily dispatch vodka after vodka, soothing his pain with the clear spirit. His personal soundtrack for the grieving process was repeatedly selected from the jukebox, as if on a loop. The melancholic tune that reminded McIntyre of Tony was ‘Sometimes We Cry’ by Tom Jones featuring Van Morrison. The lyrics that McIntyre immersed himself in during those long weeks of autumn 2000 were certainly appropriate. The haunting song ends with the lines:
Sometimes we live,
Sometimes we die,
Sometimes we cry,
Sometimes we cry.
One regular recalls how McIntyre, a known McGovern enforcer who had survived being shot three years earlier, symbolised the feeling in Thomson’s after the murder. He said:
He would play that song at least once a day, usually more depending on how much he’d had to drink. He was emotional about what had happened to Tony. This went on for months. A lot of us would joke that it would be us that would be crying if we heard it again – it got on your nerves after a while. We were careful not to let big Duncy hear us say that.
Tony’s murder sent shock waves through the Springburn community and the Glasgow criminal underworld. In Springburn, many would feel a secret happiness about the end of a man whose heroin had claimed the lives of many sons and daughters. They knew about the many teenage girls, once the babes of proud parents, who were now forced to sell sex on The Strip in Glasgow in order to scrape together cash for another tenner bag, which allowed Tony to live the high life. Others openly welcomed his departure. They had tasted the family’s violence and drug dealing first hand. Some, however, were happy to remember Tony as a married family man rather than a violent thief and drug dealer.
In the other major criminal heartlands – places like Possil, Paisley and Pollok – rivals kept a close eye on events as they watched and waited for the inevitable violent repercussions and the equally inevitable grab for power. Most now believed that the power and influence of the McGoverns was waning, with the family unable to control Springburn never mind further afield.
Stevenson was the prime suspect, indeed the only suspect, after the murder of his former friend. Amassing evidence of his involvement was the unenviable – some would say impossible – task of a murder squad that was working long hours but making little progress. There was some hope in the form of witnesses who included those attending a nearby function and a teenage thief who had been on the flat roof of a shop near to the New Morven. When asked, none could – or perhaps would – be certain of what they saw.
Some police officers joked about how the overtime generated from the large-scale murder enquiry was helping to pay for a new TV or that summer’s family holiday. It did not help their task that the McGoverns banned the police from releasing a photo of Tony. The public only got to see his face after an old police mugshot found its way to the
Sunday
Mail.