Bonded by Blood

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  Rolfe met Diane Evans after her family had moved to the Basildon area. The couple started seeing each other on a casual basis when Diane was 18. The relationship went from strength to strength and shortly after Diane’s 19th birthday the couple moved into Rolfe’s mother’s home. Keen to impress his attractive girlfriend, Rolfe stepped up his drug-dealing operation in nightclubs around Essex to fund a better lifestyle for them both. The relationship was turbulent, to say the least, but regardless of how much the couple fought and argued they remained hopelessly devoted to each other.

  Rolfe was far from intelligent, but it didn’t take him long to realise that selling pills to nightclub revellers was never going to make him rich. If you wanted to make serious money, the quickest but most dangerous way was to order large amounts from suppliers and simply not pay them. Stupid or fearless, I’m not sure which, but Rolfe became very proficient at it.

  Rolfe and Diane’s daughter, Georgie, was born in the autumn of 1990. A few weeks later, Rolfe made a drugs sale which would dictate the path the rest of his life was to follow. A man turned up at Rolfe’s home, having been told by friends that he had good quality cocaine for sale. As is the norm, a small test sample was given to the man to try. ‘This is fucking good gear,’ he said. ‘Where did you get it?’

  Rolfe, high on his own supply, replied, ‘Fuck knows, I ripped off some idiot for it in Southend.’

  The pair fell about laughing and spent the day snorting the rest of the cocaine together. The man was Tony Tucker – Rolfe had found his kindred spirit.

  Rolfe and I never really did see eye to eye after our first meeting. Our views clashed on most things. However my association with Tucker was business, Rolfe’s was personal, so like and dislike didn’t really come into it. Rolfe had a fairly serious cocaine problem and hanging around with Tucker helped because there was a constant supply at a discount price, if not for free.

  Merging with anyone in business is always potentially hazardous, but particularly so if you’re involved in our line of work. When I had taken over Raquels from Venables I had, in the eyes of those concerned, become top of that particular heap. However, when I merged with Tucker, who ran a much larger door firm, I was seen as the new boy in his organisation. Long-standing members of his firm resented me. They felt threatened by a newcomer who had a degree of clout. The fact that I was also introducing people like Steve, Nathan and Thomkins to the mix caused further resentment. Tucker’s doormen had their own people who they were earning from. I didn’t know they had dealers and thought I was being helpful.

  Shortly after Tucker’s birthday party, Steve and Thomkins began working at Club UK in Wandsworth, where Tucker ran the security. (Their position had been discussed at Tucker’s birthday party.) For the exclusive right to sell drugs in there, they paid Tucker £1,000 per weekend. On average, their return for Friday and Saturday nights was £12,000.

  On Christmas Eve 1993, the firm celebrated in style. My brother, Michael, and his wife, Carol, came to a party we were attending in the West End. It was held at one of the most exclusive clubs in the UK at the time. There were long queues of people outside, which we ignored as a matter of course. These events where the firm got together were extraordinary. Because of our connections with door teams, nobody paid to get in anywhere, or for drinks or drugs. In some places, huge bags of cocaine, Special K and Ecstasy were made available to the firm and their associates.

  When you looked around the dark room, you were surrounded by 40 or more friends, all ‘faces’. The music was so loud it lifted you; you were all one – we had total control. Those in the firm created an atmosphere that demanded respect from other villains. Straight people hardly noticed. On the surface, everyone was friendly, but there was this feeling of power and evil. Tucker felt it, too. Often he would look across a club and smile knowingly. Looking back, we revelled in the atmosphere we created wherever we went. We were living like kings but behaving like animals.

  It was a memorable Christmas for me. After the party, we went back to Steve and Nathan’s flat in Denmark Court in Surrey Quays, an exclusive development in the south London Docklands. Strewn across the floor, spilling out of a carrier bag, lay more than £20,000, the proceeds of that weekend’s drug dealing. They earned so much money, they didn’t know how to spend it or where to put it. Unfortunately for Steve and Nathan, it was to be their last lucrative Christmas: their drug-dealing operation was about to come to an abrupt halt.

  In March 1994, 20-year-old Kevin Jones collapsed and died in Club UK after taking Ecstasy he had purchased there. It didn’t take long before the names of Steve, Nathan and Thomkins were given to police as possible suppliers of the drug that killed Kevin. Instead of raiding their homes and arresting them, the police mounted a surveillance operation in the hope that they could arrest and convict those at the top end of the drug chain. On 6 May 1994, the police pounced and found 1,500 Ecstasy pills in a car parked beneath Steve and Nathan’s flat. The car was not registered to either man. Police checks revealed it had, in fact, been reported stolen in Bristol some weeks earlier.

  At the same time as the police swooped in London, Dave Thomkins was arrested at his home in Bath. Steve and Nathan were placed under arrest and refused bail, while Thomkins was interviewed and granted bail pending further inquiries. Nathan’s girlfriend, an Asian princess named Yasmin, and Steve’s girlfriend, a stunning Swede named Ulrika, were also arrested. They told me later that they had refused to answer police questions and so had been granted bail pending further inquiries.

  As soon as Dave Thomkins was released, he rang and told me what had happened. I said I would organise a solicitor for Steven and Nathan and that we should meet up for their appearance at Tower Bridge Magistrates’ Court. Yasmin and Ulrika also attended the hearing. Steve and Nathan were granted bail on the condition they give a £20,000 surety. They were told they would have to remain in custody until it was paid.

  When I told Tucker about the arrests, he began shouting and screaming. He was worried that Steve and Nathan were going to grass on him for taking rent. I told him that there was absolutely no chance of that. Thomkins and I met Yasmin the following day and she gave us £20,000 in cash. We took the money to Leman Street police station in the City, pushed it over the counter and asked for our friends to be released. The officer at the desk was gobsmacked. He didn’t know how to proceed, so Thomkins and I were kept waiting for hours while inquiries were made.

  We were taken into a room and asked where the money had come from. We told the police a family friend had lent it to us. In the end, the officer said they were going to refuse it. Bail would be granted only if it could be shown that the money had been in an account prior to Steve and Nathan’s arrest. After making several frantic phone calls, we found someone who was able to do the necessary and the following morning Steve and Nathan were released on bail.

  It was becoming increasingly clear to me that people in the drug trade were operating on borrowed time. To be successful, a drug dealer has to make it known to as many people as possible that they have gear for sale: it’s no good them standing in a nightclub with 500 Ecstasy pills in their pockets and keeping the fact to themselves. The more people you tell, the more pills you sell: the trade-off is that the chances of being arrested rise dramatically.

  Chapter 4

  Back at Raquels a new manager named Mark Combes had taken over and an agreement was soon reached that the way forward was to have rave nights. This new music culture that was sweeping across the country was going to replace the three hours of chart music and five slow dances at the end of each night, interrupted at regular intervals by morons trying to fuck or fight each other, which had been the format at Raquels for years. There was no place for violence on the rave scene – all the kids were into the fashionable ‘peace and happiness’ thing. To the revellers, Raquels was now trouble-free. Most of the violence was behind the scenes or away from the premises.

  When word got round about the proposed change at Raquels, Mark Comb
es was soon approached by a promotions team from Southend who were very professional and very successful. They were, at the time, hiring out a club in the Southend area that didn’t hold enough people to fulfil the demand they had created. The promotions team was looking for larger premises. A deal was struck and a date was set for them to begin.

  The following day a man named Mark Murray came into Raquels and asked to speak to me. He told me that he sold most of the gear in the clubs around the Basildon and Southend area and had heard that the promotions team from Southend was coming into Raquels. He asked me if we could come to a financial agreement that would allow him to sell drugs exclusively in the club.

  I rang Tucker and he asked me to tell Murray that he could have his deal. The ‘rent’ for operating in the club would depend on the amount of drugs he sold per night. If the club became busy because of the rave nights, then the deal would be adjusted accordingly, making the sale of drugs more lucrative for all involved. For now, both parties agreed to see how things went. It was going to be the door staff’s job to ensure there was no trouble from other dealers and also that an early warning of any police presence would be given.

  On Friday, 25 July 1994, Raquels opened its doors for the first house and garage night promoted by the team from Southend. It was absolutely packed because this type of event was rare in a violent town like Basildon, where peroxide blondes, cheap drinks and drunken nights were the norm. We kept all those types out and for those not involved in the politics it really was an enjoyable night.

  There was no trouble among the customers and the atmosphere in there was fantastic. It’s hard to describe. You could feel the music, it was so loud. It was hard to see anything because of the darkness and smoke, but already there was a feeling of unity among the revellers. With the crowds and the house music came a demand for Ecstasy. Raquels was hit by an avalanche of drugs. Local men were quickly recruited by Mark Murray and dealers were everywhere in the club. The demand was being met.

  I had now recruited what I considered to be an ideal door. I had doormen who were not bullies. They were friendly and could mix with the people who were entering the club and were not seen as intimidating. Yet if someone wanted trouble, they would get it – and they would regret it. None of the men were from the Basildon area; they came from south and east London, so they weren’t impressed by the local men’s reputations. They took people how they found them and dealt with them accordingly. Without exception, everybody accepted it.

  On the face of it, the police now had a peaceful club. They could divert their attentions elsewhere. The occasional victim was of our own kind and so of little concern to them. Previously, we had endured twice-weekly visits from the constabulary, but we rarely saw them now. We had a club full to capacity with peaceful people. The customers were getting what they wanted and the firm got what it wanted. The lunatics had taken over the asylum.

  Another lunatic was making himself at home in rather different surroundings. Pat Tate had secured his favourite gym-orderly job upon his arrival at HMP Spring Hill and had managed to talk officers into letting him train at a local gym. There, Tate met several local girls whom he invited back to the prison. At first, they thought he was joking, but Tate assured them he always meant what he said. Soon Tate and his female entourage were indulging in group sex fuelled by drink and drugs in his cell.

  In the same month that Raquels started hosting rave nights, Tate was released from prison. All he possessed was his drug habit and a bad attitude. I call prisons hate factories because all they produce are people full of hatred. Tate came out of prison much that way. He wanted the world to know he was out and he wanted the world to know he was not happy about the way he had been treated. No doubt the prison staff who had encountered Tate were unhappy about the way he had treated them too.

  Tony Tucker met Tate quite by chance with Craig Rolfe one morning at a café in Southend. Tate was with a man named Shaun Miller, who knew both Tucker and Rolfe. Tucker warmed to men like Tate; he was the sort of man he deemed ‘useful’. Tate was 6 ft 2 in., extremely broad, 18 stone and fearless. He also had a glamorous bit of history. His fight with the police in court and escape on a motorbike were talking points in criminal circles. Tucker invited Tate to a night out and the same evening he became a member of the firm.

  I had been made aware of Tate long before his release from prison. A teenage girl who regularly came into Raquels had told me during a conversation that her uncle was in prison and she visited him on a fairly regular basis. Over the following weeks and months, I’d always ask her how her uncle was getting on, let her into the club for nothing and get her the occasional drink. Having been in prison myself, I know how much it means to have your loved ones ‘on the outside’ taken care of.

  When Tate was released he came down to the club to thank me and introduce himself since he had now joined forces with Tucker. He struck me as an extremely likeable person and when he invited me to a party that was being held later that night, I readily accepted. When I arrived, the likeable Pat Tate whom I had met just a few hours earlier had been replaced by a drugged-up, slurring zombie. He was in an alley that ran down the side of the house. His huge frame was propping up a wall. He was sweating so much, vapour was pouring from his head. The cold night air was visibly cooling him down, but his mood was a blazing inferno. He was rambling about people he wanted sorted out and other firms he wanted crushed. I put Tate’s rant down to the fact he was celebrating his release and had taken too many drugs, but I was not the only one his behaviour had alarmed.

  Tate’s arrival was met with resentment by many firm members. A man named Chris Wheatley had returned from America some time before Tate’s release. Tucker had latched onto him, becoming a ‘close’ friend and giving him control of the door of Club Art, one of his clubs in Southend. When Tate was released, however, Tucker dropped Chris as if he didn’t exist. He also began to badmouth him to other doormen, casting doubt on his ability and sneering at the way he handled incidents that arose at the club. I really liked Chris and couldn’t understand why Tucker behaved the way he did. There was no room for sentiment in the firm, though: Chris had fallen from grace and Pat Tate was to take his place.

  Others who had no reason to dislike Tate felt their position was threatened. Few felt comfortable about his appointment because he had a domineering attitude and an explosive temper. Tucker, on the other hand, was loving every minute of it. He enjoyed pitching people against one another. On one occasion a doorman from Chelmsford mentioned in conversation that he thought another doorman named JJ was a police informant. JJ was a good, decent man who had known Tucker for years but that counted for nothing in our firm.

  Tucker rang JJ and arranged a meeting with him outside McDonald’s in Chelmsford. Then he told the other man that if he thought JJ was a grass, he should confront him and not talk about him behind his back. The accuser was allowed to arm himself with a machete and was taken to the meeting at McDonald’s. Fearing he was going to lose face, he accused the unsuspecting JJ of being a grass in front of Tucker. JJ denied it, of course.

  ‘He’s just called you a fucking grass,’ said Tucker. ‘What are you going to do about it? I’d fucking hit him if he said that to me.’

  JJ, an unwilling combatant, threw a half-hearted punch and the other man responded by slashing JJ’s arm with the machete. JJ fled. You didn’t get a P45 in our firm.

  One evening, I received a telephone call from Steve and Nathan. They were with Thomkins. They told me they were having trouble with some doormen from Bristol who, seeing them driving round in a BMW and knowing they had a flat in London, wanted to get in on the act. I told them I would make some phone calls and sort it out. I rang the doormen and told them to leave it out with Steve, Nathan and Thomkins otherwise they would have trouble. I gave them the impression the trio was working for a much bigger operation. We knew the Bristol doormen’s names and where to find them. They didn’t have a clue who we were or where we were from, which put us in quite a po
werful position. The doormen argued that Steve, Nathan and Thomkins were the cause of the trouble, but they said it wasn’t worth falling out over and the matter would come to an end.

  The next morning, I got a frantic phone call from Steve and Nathan. They said they had been driving through Bath in their BMW when they had been flagged down. They were dragged from the car by two men, who informed them that they were taking the vehicle and keeping it. Steve and Nathan told me they wanted their car back, but they were scared of the thieves.

  I said to them that if we were to go down to Bath to recover a car, we would have to go firm-handed because we wouldn’t know what we were up against until we got there. I asked them how many men we’d need and they said if I could get ten down there, they would pay us all £300 each. I asked for a contact number for the man who had taken the car and said I’d be down that evening with ten people. I told them to stay out of the way until the matter was resolved.

  The man holding the car was called Billy Gillings. He had a reputation in the area as a hard man and had just come out of jail for robbing a security van. I rang Billy and asked him if he had Steve and Nathan’s car. He got all shirty at first, so I told him to calm down and listen. I pointed out to him that I knew where he lived and he didn’t even know my name. I was coming to Bath to recover the car whatever. I had no particular loyalty to Steve and Nathan and therefore we could come to an agreement. ‘Falling out over a BMW is hardly worth it,’ I said.

  Billy agreed. I told him for recovering the car I was going to be paid £1,000. If he would meet me at Bath railway station and give me the car, I would give him half the money. He would have to tell his friends that we had chased him, assaulted him and taken the car back. We’d both be £500 better off and everyone would be happy.