Wild Thing (15 page)

Dejected, but far from defeated, I went back to the friend who worked at the DVLA. I asked him to find out whether the car had been registered to a new address. Two days later he walked into the club and gave me another piece of paper. When I read it, I saw that Smith and my wife had moved to Aldershot. I know I wasn’t thinking straight – I was probably teetering on the edge of insanity – but the rage that burned within me was driving me on and on to certain disaster. I thanked my friend for giving me the address and then telephoned Ray to ask him if he would meet me in the morning. ‘Where are we off to, Lew?’ Ray enquired.

‘Aldershot,’ I replied. ‘I have found Smith, and I am going to rub the bastard out.’

There was silence for a few moments, and then Ray said, ‘Fine, Lew, fine. I will come around first thing.’

I telephoned another man and asked him to bring ‘a powerful silent tool’ to the club as I needed it for a bit of business. The man, who supplied firearms to a lot of villains in London, didn’t ask questions; he just replied, ‘I’ll be there in an hour. Meet me on the car park.’ The cold night air cleared my head a little as I leant against the boot of my car waiting for the guy to arrive. The rage had died, but my mind was still swirling with mixed emotions – one moment I knew my plan was insane; the next it made sense. Images of Billy breaking his heart and Smith’s words ‘too bad, too bad’ would not leave me. A pair of headlights picked me out on the car park, bringing me back to reality. Seconds later the armourer was telling me to open the boot of his car.

‘It’s a fucking crossbow,’ I said when I saw the weapon the man had brought to me.

‘The best there is,’ the man replied. ‘You said you needed something silent and powerful. The target will be brown bread [dead] before they hit the deck, Lew.’ The man gave me four steel-tipped bolts and explained that if one hit a man, it would pass straight through him and take half his vital organs with it. ‘If people see him go down, Lew, they’ll think he’s had a heart attack, because there won’t be any noise.’ He then advised me, ‘Make sure you clean them with methylated spirits first. It will remove all fingerprints.’

This guy could sell sand to the Arabs; he certainly convinced me that the crossbow was preferable to a gun. ‘How much do I owe you?’ I asked.

‘It’s on the house,’ he replied, ‘a favour, Lew. Maybe one day you can do me one in return.’

I thanked the man, put the crossbow and bolts in the boot of my car and returned to the club. The following morning Ray and I drove down to Aldershot. I told Ray I didn’t expect him to get involved in anything that I intended to do, but he said he was with me through choice. ‘Somebody needs to look out for you,’ he said. ‘You’re not thinking straight, Lew.’

When we arrived at the address, which was close to Aldershot military barracks, Ray looked through a dustbin that had fortunately been left at the side of the house. We wanted to find a letter or household bill that would confirm that Smith and Jean actually lived there. Moments later Ray stood up smiling and waved a piece of paper above his head. I had found Smith again. The house was situated on a main road, so I parked my car in an adjacent side road, where I had a clear view of his front door. It was starting to get dark when I saw the porch light come on. A man stepped out of the house with a small dog on a lead and closed the door. ‘It’s him, Ray; it’s fucking him,’ I said. I could hardly contain my excitement. The bastard who had caused me and my children so much heartache was going to be dead in the next few minutes. I loaded the crossbow and sat in the car. ‘I will get him when he has finished walking the dog,’ I said. ‘I don’t want to fuck the dog’s night up too.’ Ray sat in silence, eyeing the loaded crossbow nervously.

Twenty minutes later I saw a figure emerging from the darkness with a dog. ‘That’s him, Ray; that’s him,’ I said as I got out of the car. Ray opened the passenger door and ran around the car to me. Smith’s head was in line with the steel-tipped bolt that I was about to unleash. Fearing I may miss such a small target, I lowered my aim. A bolt through the upper torso would be equally lethal. I didn’t care where it hit him, so long as the bastard died. As I squeezed the trigger, Ray pushed me hard, and we fell into the side of the car.

‘You mad bastard!’ Ray shouted. ‘You have fucking killed him! You have fucking killed him!’

I fought Ray off and got to my feet. Smith was standing at his front door, presumably getting his keys out. There was no indication that he was aware of my attempt to murder him seconds earlier.

I had missed. Ray’s charging into me had caused the bolt to veer off its intended path. I went to the boot of the car to reload, but Ray jumped on me again. ‘Please, Lew, please, don’t fucking do it. Think about your kids.’

By the time that Ray and I had finished struggling, Smith was probably in bed. I sat in the car with my head on the steering wheel. Ray put his hand on my shoulder and pleaded with me to go home. I knew he was right: my children needed me and I needed them. The madness that had controlled me since I’d met Jean in Guildford subsided. I started up the car and headed for home. I owe Ray Todd a lot. He is a good decent man who has never turned his back on me in numerous times of need. He later told me that he was worried about my state of mind that day and had only accompanied me to prevent me doing something I’d later regret.

About a month later my friend from the DVLA approached me with another piece of paper in his hand. ‘They have moved again, Lew,’ he said. I thanked him and took the piece of paper. I didn’t read what was written on it. I just walked to the nearest bin and dropped it in.

The responsibility of having to look after my children meant my boxing training regime had to be reduced dramatically. I had been forced to stop attending Terry Lawless’s gym and had restricted myself to running in a local park and working out on a punchbag at home. When the children started school, it gave me some free time during the day, so I started training at the gym run by Neville Sheen. The harder I trained, the more pumped up and full of stamina I became. I had endured some pretty difficult times since Jean had deserted us. I was now bursting with explosive energy and wanted nothing more than to unload it and all of my pent-up anger on somebody in the ring.

Standing in the club one night, I couldn’t help overhearing a man who was telling a group of people what an awesome fantastic this and that Roy Shaw was. The way the man was going on about Shaw, you’d have thought he was describing God. I shouldn’t have interrupted him, but I couldn’t help myself. ‘Shaw’s not all that,’ I said. ‘He wouldn’t fight me when I challenged him.’

The man looked at me and laughed. ‘He would fucking do you, son, with one arm tied behind his back.’

I answered his petulant remark with my forehead. The man clutched his nose and began to fall backwards. Blood gushed from between his fingers and poured down his shirt. Before he hit the floor, I lifted him into the air with a right hook. Peter and the other members of the door team ran over to find out what was going on. The man’s friends began shouting about Shaw, and Peter asked me what Shaw had to do with all of this. It was then that I told Peter why I had come to London. ‘I came here to fight Shaw,’ I said, ‘not to work the door. That prick over there reckons Shaw could do me with one hand behind his back. I have contacted Shaw’s people but they said they wanted £10,000 up front before I could fight him. As you know, Peter, I’m not holding that sort of cash. The truth of the matter is Shaw is too scared to fight me.’

Peter looked at me, shook his head and laughed. ‘As soon as that guy finds his head and he’s been cleaned up and escorted from the club, we need to talk.’ Ten minutes later I found Peter sitting in the restaurant and I pulled up a chair. ‘I’m confident you could beat Roy,’ Peter said. ‘In fact I have so much faith in you I am going to get a consortium together and raise the £10,000.’

I didn’t know what to say. I was speechless. After a moment or two I thanked Peter and shook his hand. ‘I won’t let you or anybody else down,’ I said. ‘I have wanted Shaw and his title for a long time.’ Within a few days Peter, Brian Gerard, Ray Smithers and a guy named Peter ‘Flat Nose’ Lee had raised the £10,000, contacted Shaw’s manager and agreed I would publicly challenge Shaw in the ring at his next fight. Terry Hollingsworth, the ABA champion who had been defeated by Shaw in one round not long beforehand, was entrusted with the stake money from both parties. It was agreed that the winner would take the entire purse for the fight. The dream was back on.

 

THE LAST BARE-KNUCKLE FIGHT ON ENGLISH SOIL TO ATTRACT MAJOR
and widespread public interest took place at Farnborough, Hampshire, in 1860, when the undisputed champion of England Tom Sayers and the American champion John Camel Heenan battered each other into oblivion in two hours and twenty minutes. It was a somewhat bizarre and brutal fight. Heenan appeared to be winning, but the crowd rallied to Sayers’s assistance by invading the ring. When order was restored, a devastating blow from Heenan fractured Sayers’s right arm, but still he boxed on. Police officers tried to stop the fight in the thirty-sixth round, but once more spectators spilled into the ring. The boxers fought five more rounds before it was finally declared a draw. Both fighters were awarded commemorative belts, and a public collection raised over £3,000 for Sayers, given on condition that he would never enter the ring again. Seven years later a Cambridgeshire undergraduate drew up a boxing code under the patronage of the eighth Marquis of Queensberry that included the obligatory use of boxing gloves.

Over a hundred years later, and less than two years after his release from prison, Roy Shaw picked up where Sayers and Heenan had left off, putting unlicensed fighting back in the limelight. After defeating numerous contenders from the travelling community at Barnet Fair, Shaw was given the opportunity to fight the king of the Gypsies, a formidable bare-knuckle fighter called Donny ‘The Bull’ Adams.

Shaw’s close friend Joe Pyle (a south-London gangster with more connections than the National Grid) saw the fight as a unique money-making opportunity. Pyle became Roy Shaw’s confidant, manager and promoter. The Krays, the Richardsons and men like Buster Edwards or Freddie Foreman may be better known to the public, but by the end of the ’60s all of these men and their hangers-on were either in prison or living abroad in exile. Amongst the criminal fraternity Joe Pyle was equally notorious, equally feared and equally respected. If something major was being planned by a criminal gang, Pyle would know about it. From the events leading up to the murder of Jack the Hat by the Kray gang and the Great Train Robbery to the American Mafia’s attempts to overtake London’s casino scene, Pyle witnessed it all. Yet despite a few close calls – including a spell in prison on a murder charge that would have seen him hanged if found guilty – Pyle remained at liberty throughout. He was, and without doubt remains, a very, very shrewd operator. Together Pyle and Shaw made a very formidable partnership.

Traditionally, unlicensed fights had taken place at fairs, travellers’ sites, pub car parks or scrap-metal yards. The Shaw versus Adams contest generated so much interest that Pyle decided to stage a larger, more lucrative, professional event. He hired a large field from a farmer and erected beer tents and a boxing ring. Pony racing was organised, along with various other forms of entertainment. For a mere ten pounds the customers were guaranteed an entire day of fun. However, the Chief Constable of Essex, where the fight was due to take place, had other plans. Two days before the event, with hundreds of tickets already sold, he contacted Pyle and said there was no way the fight was going to be allowed to take place. Despite his best efforts to inform ticket-holders, Pyle was unable to tell everybody. On the day of the event the field was filled with disgruntled travellers baying for Joe Pyle’s blood. ‘We have been conned,’ they told the television reporters who flocked to the scene. ‘Roy Shaw and his cronies haven’t heard the end of this.’

Initially Pyle was concerned, but then he realised that the publicity would create more interest in the fight. More interest meant more money, and that appealed to Pyle. Over the next few days and weeks Pyle tried in vain to put the fight on, but he was told that it couldn’t go ahead unless it was governed by the British Boxing Board of Control (BBBC). Pyle conceded that the event appeared to have hit a brick wall. There was no way that Shaw and Adams were going to be granted licences to box. Both were considered to be too old, and both had criminal convictions. The hype surrounding the fight continued to grow in the media, so the police decided to take some pre-emptive action in the hope it would end all of the speculation about it ever taking place. They arrested Roy Shaw and Donny Adams and charged them with breach of the peace. Unwittingly, the police had set in motion a chain of events that would decriminalise unlicensed fighting. When the men appeared in court, Adams told the magistrate, ‘You cannot stop me and Shaw having this fight. It might take place in a park, where innocent people might get hurt, but it will take place. We had hoped that by staging it in a ring, we might be able to make it safer, but now that has been denied to us.’

When Shaw was asked if he had anything to say, he told the magistrate that in Borstal he had been advised to sort his differences out with people in the ring rather than in the street. ‘It was,’ Shaw said, ‘the way I preferred to resolve disputes.’ The prosecution said that, despite the men’s apparent willingness to fight, they had been forced to intervene because it was a criminal offence for any fighter not to wear gloves or to fight without a time limit.

The magistrate thought long and hard, referred to a large pile of law books on his bench and then looked up to address the court. ‘As long as the defendants wear boxing gloves, employ the services of a proper referee and moderate the fight using timed rounds, the fight, should they still choose to partake in one, whether licensed or unlicensed, would not be illegal.’