Wild Thing (23 page)

Blood poured down McLean’s legs and started to soak into the carpet. The lead shot had hit him in the backside, leaving a gaping hole and causing massive blood loss. He couldn’t see the wound, but McLean knew it was serious and he knew he had to get help as soon as possible. Running out into the road, McLean hailed a taxi and demanded the driver take him to hospital. ‘You can’t get in my cab,’ the driver said. ‘You’re covered in blood.’ Fearing he may be bleeding to death, McLean told the driver he would kneel on the seat rather than sit on it and pay to have the taxi cleaned. By the time McLean reached hospital, he was beginning to feel dizzy and faint because of the amount of blood he had lost. When staff in the accident and emergency department saw the extent of his injuries, McLean was laid on a trolley and rushed to the operating theatre, where his backside was stitched back together. The following day McLean awoke to find police officers sitting at his bedside. ‘We have been waiting to take a statement from you,’ they said.

McLean, a scholar from the old school, replied, ‘You’re going to have a long wait then. I don’t talk to you people. I’m saying nothing, so you may as well bugger off.’

The officers told McLean they would return in a few days, when he had been able to appreciate the severity of the attack against him. After three days the police reappeared, but McLean still refused to assist them.

When Barry Dalton heard that he was going to get away with the shooting, he couldn’t stop laughing. Anyone else would have feared for their life after shooting McLean, but Barry was so ‘can’t give a fuck’ arrogant that he refused to show concern about McLean’s fearsome reputation. Barry knew that McLean would fight any man and, more often than not, come out on top, but he also knew McLean wouldn’t resort to using guns or committing murder. McLean knew it too. Instead of telling people that Barry had shot him, he told those who asked that a couple of crackheads had taken a pot shot at him when he was working on the door.

Some time later Barry appeared on the same bill as McLean to fight at a venue in Woodford, Essex. People warned Barry not to go because McLean had vowed revenge, but Barry told them, ‘If he hurts me again, I will shoot him again. He will get tired of being shot before I get fed up of being punched.’

As Barry sat in his dressing-room preparing himself for the bout ahead that night, he heard somebody trying to open the door, which he had locked. Moments later there was an almighty crash, and McLean stood growling in the splintered doorway. He stepped forward, grabbed Barry by the ears and smashed his head against a metal locker. ‘You mug!’ McLean shouted at Barry. ‘You were big enough with a gun in your hand, now look at you shaking!’

Barry’s bravado had disappeared. He thought that McLean had flipped and was going to pull him apart with his bare hands. ‘Please, Lenny,’ Barry begged, ‘let me explain. I was on the gear. I was on drugs . . . I didn’t know what I was doing.’

McLean threw Barry to the floor and raised his foot as if to stamp on him. ‘Let me apologise, Lenny!’ Barry shouted. ‘Don’t do this. Just let me apologise and shake your hand.’

‘Shake my hand?’ McLean replied. ‘I’ll shake your hand to say it’s over, Barry, but I want you dressed and out of here in two minutes. Forget your fight tonight. Just get as far away from me as possible.’

Barry got to his feet, shook McLean’s hand and started to get dressed. He knew that, despite having to grovel to McLean in private, he had scored a moral victory. He could openly walk the streets and drink in his old haunts, and people would know he had shot McLean and nothing had been done about it. Regardless of what McLean told people, Barry still appeared to have put him in his place. The incident set a very dangerous precedent for Barry. He now believed he could shoot or threaten to shoot people and, like McLean, they would back down.

Unfortunately for Barry a lot of villains in the East End of London are more than happy to arm themselves if threatened, and they are equally happy to use those arms. Around the same time as the incident in Woodford, Barry had unwittingly fallen foul of one of east London’s most powerful families. Barry, backed by a firm from west London, had been putting the frighteners on a gang of scaffolders who had just secured a lucrative contract on Canary Wharf. His intention was to take the contract from them and sell it on to another company. Unfortunately for Barry the owner of the scaffolding company had connections in the underworld, and a very heavy east London crime family became involved.

As Barry sat in a pub in Canning Town, two brothers from the family approached him. One sat to Barry’s left; the other to his right. ‘All right, boys,’ Barry said, eyeing the men nervously.

The man to his right stood up, took a sawn-off shotgun from his coat and pointed it at the landlord, who was talking to half a dozen customers gathered around the bar. ‘You lot, carry on fucking talking but don’t turn around!’ the man shouted. Nobody argued. The landlord and customers turned to face the opposite wall. Their feet were rooted firmly to the floor. None of them dared to turn around or pass comment to the gunmen. The man to Barry’s left produced a handgun and pushed it hard against Barry’s temple. ‘See you, cunt. Are you ready to die?’ he hissed.

‘No, don’t do it. Don’t do it,’ Barry pleaded.

The man removed the gun from Barry’s temple then pressed it against his throat. ‘Leave off the people in Canary Wharf. Do you understand who and what I am referring to?’ Barry, unable to speak, nodded frantically. ‘So we understand each other, cunt?’ Barry nodded again. The two men put their guns away and strolled back out of the pub. Barry had been warned.

Some time after Barry had been spoken to by the two brothers, he contacted them and said he had a bit of business they might be interested in. Barry had kept his word about not troubling the scaffolding gang, so the brothers had no reason not to listen to any proposal Barry might have had. A meeting was arranged to take place at the pub where the men had first ‘met’ in Canning Town. ‘Do you remember the place?’ one of the brothers asked.

‘Remember it?’ Barry laughed. ‘I’m still having fucking nightmares about it.’

When they arrived at the pub, Barry told the brothers that through his contacts in Dublin he had been told that the IRA had confiscated 500 kilos of cannabis from dealers in County Cork. Not wanting to damage their public image in Ireland by being caught with illicit drugs, the IRA had made it known that they wanted to offload the heist outside the Irish Republic. Any top-drawer villain knows that a deal with a terrorist organisation like the IRA can be invaluable. A favour done is a favour owed, and when it came to assassinations and losing bodies, the IRA were the world’s best. The brothers thought it would be good to have such powerful allies, so they agreed that their family would buy all of the cannabis. Before doing so, they wanted to make their position clear not only to Barry but also to his IRA friends: nobody who wasn’t directly involved with the deal could know of the transaction, and further enquiries from potential buyers could no longer be considered, regardless of the amount of money offered. A deal had been struck, and they were not interested in entering into any sort of ongoing auction. Everybody concerned agreed to abide by the conditions of the deal, so plans to import the drugs into the UK were put into operation.

Despite Barry agreeing not to talk about the deal, as soon as he started to celebrate clinching it, he couldn’t control his tongue. Believing it was the start of a lucrative relationship with not only the IRA but also the brothers and their family, Barry began to act as if he were now invincible. He threatened people using the names of his new ‘partners’, and despite the agreement he had entered into, he offered the shipment of drugs that had as yet not arrived to villains that he thought might be interested. Word soon got back to the brothers and the IRA men, and neither party was happy.

One evening Barry turned up at a minicab office he had been demanding protection money from. ‘Things have changed, mate,’ he told the proprietor. ‘Instead of £200, your rent’s £500 a week now. I’ve got two new heavy partners, and they also need a cut.’ The man said that he couldn’t afford £500 per week, so Barry spelt out exactly who his new partners were in an effort to terrify the man. It worked. Barry certainly did unnerve the man. Unfortunately he scared him so much that the man ran to the police for protection. Unknown to Barry the police installed various recording devices in the man’s cab office and set up an observation point in a first-floor flat directly opposite it. As soon as Barry walked into the cab office and demanded his protection money, the police swooped. Barry was charged with several offences and remanded in custody to await trial.

Silly Barry – I wish he had stayed in prison. If he had, he might still be alive today, but it wasn’t to be. Barry applied for bail and was back on the streets within two weeks. The brothers had already discussed Barry’s future with the IRA members involved in the drug deal and the conclusion reached was that Barry Dalton had no future. He was going to be terminated.

During his brief spell in prison Barry had become friends with a villain named Del Croxson, who was serving five years for threatening a man with a gun. The pair became close because of their mutual interest in bodybuilding. Del was a powerful stocky man who worked the door at Antics nightclub in Bromley-by-Bow, east London. After Croxson was released from prison, his friendship with Barry continued. They would train together, and whenever Barry had a prizefight Del would be Barry’s corner man.

Friendship was not the only thing the two men shared. Barry and Del both had heroin habits, which began to affect their judgement as their craving for the drug intensified. Not only did this addiction affect them mentally, it also affected them physically. Their once muscular frames were soon reduced in size dramatically. Barry not only used heroin, he also sold it and made a comfortable living from doing so. Del, on the other hand, struggled to finance his habit, and before long relations between the two men began to deteriorate. Barry, not the most tactful person I’ve ever met, would taunt Del in front of people, asking him if he needed ten pence for a cup of tea or loose change for a meal. Although the pair never came to blows, it was obvious that Barry had nothing but contempt for Del and that Del now despised Barry. Heroin was the only thing they had left in common, and their need for it kept them bonded together. Knowing Del Croxson not only hated Barry but was always short of money and willing to do anything to earn it, the brothers approached him with a proposition. ‘Barry was involved in a bit of business with us, Del,’ they explained, ‘but his mouth’s too big. If you do a job for us, you can have his rather substantial cut.’

‘And what may that job be?’ Del enquired.

‘Top him,’ came the reply. ‘Erase Barry Dalton from your life and everybody else’s.’

‘Say no more,’ Del replied. ‘I’ve waited a long time for this opportunity. The cunt’s history.’

Del telephoned Barry and told him that he had been offered a bit of work but he wouldn’t be able to handle it himself. ‘It’s a big job, Barry,’ he said. ‘I would need not only help but backup in case it went tits up. I’ve heard you have major backup these days.’

Getting into character, Barry boasted that he was prepared to help, but any help would involve his people being paid too. ‘No problem,’ Del assured him. ‘You tell me the price and we have a deal.’ As both men replaced the receiver, both smiled.

Barry thought he was going to be mugging Del off on a deal, and Del had just laid the bait that would lure the man he hated to his death. Later that week Barry parked his car near the Alexandra Palace entertainment complex in Wood Green, north London. When his friend Del walked up to the car, got in and greeted him, he had no idea that he was in any danger. ‘Just drive, Barry,’ Del said. ‘I think I am being followed.’

Barry slipped the car into gear and pulled away, eyeing his rear-view mirror nervously. Del took a sawn-off shotgun from inside his coat, pointed it at Barry’s head and fired both barrels. Barry’s car, which hadn’t yet gathered speed, left the road and crashed into a wall. He was later found dead, slumped across the front seats. Barry Dalton was 35 years old when he died and married with five children.

I learnt of Barry’s murder through another doorman. I can only say how I felt: absolutely gutted. I had little knowledge of the murky world in which he had immersed himself. I knew Barry loved to fight and regularly got into trouble with the police for doing so, but the news that he was involved in heroin and extortion to feed his habit shocked me. Under normal circumstances I would have attended his funeral, but I have always hated drugs and the world they represent, so I stayed away and said my goodbyes in a prayer for him. I have never taken a hard drug, a steroid or a so-called soft drug in my life. One minute those who do take them are your best friends; the next they want to stab you in the back. A drugged body has a drugged brain controlling it. It’s a fucked-up world to inhabit and not one that I even wish to visit.

In his confused and poisoned mind Del Croxson thought that snuffing out Barry had turned him into a fully fledged gangland enforcer. Instead of lying low, he began asking people if they wanted anybody else sorted. Villains are always on the lookout for lunatics or losers to do their dirty work, so it wasn’t too long before he secured another grisly task. Del agreed to slash with a knife a man who was suspected of being a police informant. The man lived in Lincoln, and the agreed fee for disfiguring him was £2,000.

For the job Del recruited two other men, whom he agreed to pay £500 each. When the trio arrived at the man’s house, things went horribly wrong. Instead of the suspected informant answering the door, an old lady opened it. ‘Can I help you?’ she asked. The trio asked if the man they wanted was home, but before the lady could answer, their intended victim put his head out of an upstairs window and asked them what they wanted. In a moment of desperation or frustration Del pulled out a 9-mm automatic handgun and fired a shot at the man. Del, who was certainly no marksman, got lucky; his intended target not so. The bullet struck the man in the head, but miraculously the wound was not fatal. Unfortunately for Del and his henchmen the police had the house under surveillance, and when they became aware of the gunfire, they immediately called for backup. A frightening car chase ensued, with Del hanging out of a window firing shots at any police vehicle that dared to come near. Just outside the city Del leapt from the car and made his escape on foot. His two companions were caught shortly afterwards in a police roadblock.