Bonded by Blood

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  ‘Yes, sure,’ he said. ‘I just don’t like people who think they can treat me like a mug. That geezer’s invested a bit of money in my business – he can fuck himself if he thinks he’s getting it back.’ And that was that; Tate never mentioned Kenneth Noye, his money or the meeting again.

  Darren Nicholls had no such influence over people nor did he have affluent friends: he was going to contribute to the operation by travelling to Holland and purchasing the drugs. He would then use ‘suicide jockeys’ he had recruited to bring the drugs into the country. Suicide jockeys were people obviously desperate for money, who were prepared to drive cars laden with drugs from the Continent to England for between £6,000 and £8,000 a trip. Nicholls assured Tate that two out of three cars would get through Customs without being caught – more than enough profit to cover the occasional loss. Tate didn’t care how many got caught because he was not even risking his own money. He felt he couldn’t lose.

  Tate, Tucker, Rolfe and the syndicate managed to raise £124,000. On 6 November, this was given to Nicholls in a holdall. He and one of his sidekicks then left for Harwich to catch the ferry. When they arrived, Nicholls got right into his gangster role. He insisted that he would purchase the tickets, he would carry the bag of cash through Customs and his ‘mate’ would have to keep a discreet distance from him at all times. He obviously did not realise that all he was doing was leaving a paper trail of evidence with his name stamped all over it.

  Nicholls really thought he had arrived in the big-time. He told his associate to remain in their cabin with the money while he spent the journey in the bar and the casino, where he lost most of the spare cash he had. When they arrived in Holland, Nicholls carried the syndicate’s cash through Dutch Customs and booked the train tickets, again in his own name. Upon arrival in Amsterdam, Nicholls’s bravado began to falter. He had no idea if he was going to be robbed or even murdered by the drug dealers he was about to meet, so he told his friend it was his turn to carry the bag. Nicholls made his way to a bar called Stone’s Café, where he had been told he could purchase some grass. The dealer, a man named Harris, told Nicholls there was no grass available, but he could supply him with cannabis resin. Harris switched on the television and searched Teletext for the current exchange rate. He tapped figures into his calculator before telling Nicholls he could sell him the resin at £1,125 per kilo, roughly half of what it would sell for in England. Nicholls stuck out his hand: the deal was done.

  Harris, Nicholls and his friend took a taxi over to Europcar, where Nicholls had pre-booked a Toledo. Nicholls completed the necessary paperwork and handed over his credit card. The assistant swiped it through the machine, but it was declined. Harris knew at once that he was dealing with a fool. Embarrassed, Nicholls asked Harris if he could use his phone.

  The three men went back to the bar and Nicholls called his bank, the TSB in Braintree. Nicholls was told that he had exceeded his £250 limit and they were not prepared to extend it. He was advised to contact somebody in England who could go into a TSB bank for him and deposit further funds. Nicholls telephoned his wife, who spent an hour running around, trying to borrow money from people. Eventually, she managed to get £300, which she deposited at the bank. Harris called another taxi and the three men went over to the Europcar depot.

  As the taxi drove off, Nicholls realised he had left his luggage in the boot and had to run after the taxi, waving his arms and shouting until it stopped. Harris was beginning to regret the moment he had set eyes on Nicholls; he certainly wasn’t the type of man he wanted to do regular business with. Nicholls finally managed to hire the car and was told by Harris to park it around the corner from the bar and await delivery of the drugs. Ten minutes later, Harris and another man appeared carrying large cardboard boxes. There were five in total and they were placed in the boot. Nicholls drove away and met up with his suicide jockeys, who were going to bring the drugs back to England. On this occasion, there were two of them. One vehicle was loaded with two boxes, the other carried three. Nicholls’s friend was ordered to travel back with the driver whose car carried the three boxes to ensure the haul was safe.

  His work finished, Nicholls drove back into the centre of Amsterdam and returned the hire car. He then booked into the Delta Hotel before returning to Stone’s Café, where he drank himself into a stupor. Nicholls should have delayed any celebrations until the drugs were safely back in England and had been examined. Harris, who had dealt with heavyweight drug dealers for years, was the man who should have been celebrating. He had ensured Nicholls wouldn’t be dealing drugs for much longer and it was unlikely there would be any comeback on him.

  Back in Basildon, Tate was also celebrating the success of his first major drug importation. The £124,000 he had given to Nicholls was going to be turned into almost £250,000 overnight. He thought that if he could do a drug run twice a month, he would be a millionaire by Christmas. If any of the investors who had given Tate money honestly believed they were going to get it back, they must have been mad. It just wasn’t the done thing in Tate’s world. A kindness was a weakness, an investor a fool. Even Noye, a man few, if any, would mess with, was due to be knocked. Tate assumed he had the right to take anybody’s money or possessions, including those of his friends.

  Tate didn’t have a car of his own so had borrowed Tucker’s black Porsche. He had arranged to take a young girl named Lizzie Fletcher out clubbing in Southend as part of his celebration party. Throughout the day, he had been taking large amounts of cocaine, Ecstasy and Special K. High on drugs and high on the thought of becoming rich, the inevitable happened. Tate misjudged a mini-roundabout on the edge of the A127 and converted Tucker’s gleaming Porsche into a heap of twisted scrap. In the early hours of the morning, Tucker was woken by the sound of his phone ringing.

  ‘This had better be good,’ he told the caller without even asking who it was.

  ‘It’s me, Pat,’ said Tate. ‘I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but I’ve totalled your fucking motor. Don’t worry, though, Tone, I will pay for it.’ Tucker remained silent. ‘I’ve been nicked,’ Tate explained. ‘They think I stole your car.’ Tate, still out of his mind on drugs, began to laugh uncontrollably. ‘They’re also going to do me for no insurance and driving under the influence. You couldn’t come and give me a lift home could you, Tone?’

  Tucker put the phone down and rang Craig Rolfe. ‘That silly bastard Tate has wrote my car off,’ Tucker ranted. ‘He was showing off to some silly little tart. I need you to go down to Southend police station and pick him up.’

  Tucker didn’t give Rolfe time to reply. He slammed down the phone and rolled over in his bed. Rolfe roused his girlfriend Diane and informed her that they had to go to Southend to pick up Tate.

  After the couple had secured Tate’s release they were both surprised by his demeanour. They had expected him to be remorseful about Tucker’s car and thankful that they had got up in the middle of the night to help him out. They couldn’t have been more wrong. As soon as Tate got in the car, he wanted to know if Rolfe had any cocaine or Ecstasy on him. When Rolfe said he hadn’t, Tate insisted they go round to a dealer’s house to get some. Diane objected and said that she and Rolfe were going straight home. Tate exploded into a fit of rage. He began punching the dashboard and screaming that he was going to have a good time regardless of what they wanted. Then, almost immediately, Tate seemed to calm down. He began telling Diane that he had loads of big drug deals in place and he was going to make Rolfe rich. Diane just looked at Tate and nodded in agreement.

  The following morning, Tucker got out of bed in a foul mood. A man who had been paid to fit the kitchen at his home had the misfortune to telephone soon after he had woken up. ‘Get around here now, Jeff,’ Tucker screamed down the phone. ‘There’s a problem with this fucking kitchen you fitted.’

  The man, who knew Tucker well, assured him that any problem would be rectified without charge; there was no need to be aggressive. He would come straight round. When Jeff arri
ved, Tucker grabbed him by the throat and dragged him through the house into the kitchen.

  ‘See this! See fucking that!’ Tucker shouted, as he pointed to minor faults. ‘I’ve fucking told you to fix them and you keep mugging me off. You treat me like some sort of fucking dog, now I’ll treat you like a dog until you learn some manners.’

  Jeff was slapped and punched and dragged out to the back of the house where Tucker’s Alsatian dogs were kept in a kennel. Tucker opened the kennel door and shoved Jeff inside. ‘Stay in there with the fucking dogs until I decide you can come out.’ Jeff lay whimpering next to two Alsatians. He was covered in their urine and faeces, but he did not dare move until Tucker released him the following day.

  The morning after the accident, Tate got up and went to see an old friend, ex-Metropolitan policeman Barry Dorman. The pair had met in the ’70s at the various car auctions that were held around London and Essex and had soon become friends. Tate, despite his age, 19 or 20 years old at that time, owned his own car front on London Road in Southend. Dorman had left the police service by this time and, although he was working full time, he subsidised his income buying and selling second-hand cars. In 1984, Dorman was involved in a very serious car accident and as a result of his injuries had to give up work. The following year, as he made a slow recovery, Tate urged Dorman to go into the second-hand-car trade full time.

  Through Tate, Dorman managed to rent a forecourt located at the junction of the old A13 and One Tree Hill in Basildon and it was here Tate arrived that morning, asking his old friend for a favour. He told Dorman that he had crashed his friend’s Porsche and it had been extensively damaged.

  ‘Could you get it fixed up for me, please, Barry?’ Tate asked. ‘He’s a really good friend and I’ve given him the hump.’

  Dorman agreed and gave his daughter the time-consuming task of trying to locate cheap second-hand spares for the repair. Dorman also arranged for quotes to carry out the bodywork. As a result of the work that needed doing on the Porsche, Dorman was in touch virtually every day with either Tate, Tucker or both – the majority of the time they were together and were accompanied by Rolfe. At that time, Dorman had a blue Range Rover 3.5 Vogue SE on his forecourt that he had recently taken as a part exchange. As Tucker was now also without a vehicle, he and Tate showed interest in purchasing the Range Rover, which Dorman had for sale at £10,995. After some negotiation, Dorman agreed to sell it to them for £9,800.

  Dorman knew that neither Tate nor Tucker would be able to get finance on the vehicle. When he pointed this out, Tucker said that his friend would be buying it on his behalf, but he would be using it. Dorman agreed to accept a £2,000 deposit and put the remainder on finance. A friend of Tucker’s named Peter Cuthbert visited Dorman’s site and provided sufficient details for him to complete the finance agreement. They then took the keys from Dorman and drove away the vehicle. Little did they know they had just invested in the perfect vehicle to assist their would-be assassins. If Tate had not crashed Tucker’s Porsche, they would still have been driving around in it three or four weeks later. A Porsche would never have made it down the rough, potholed farm track at Rettendon because the chassis sits too low to the ground. Only a Range Rover or similar 4x4 could have possibly delivered them to the spot where they were to meet their deaths.

  The same morning, after Nicholls had awoken from his drunken slumber at the Delta Hotel, he made his way to Amsterdam Central Station and caught the train to the ferry. Upon his arrival, he booked a cabin but spent most of the journey losing even more money on the roulette wheel in the casino. When the ship docked in Harwich, Nicholls purchased some duty-free lager for himself and several boxes of cigarettes for his wife. He then made his way to his car and drove home.

  The drugs and Nicholls had made it safely back to England. All Tucker, Tate and Rolfe had to do now was distribute them to the dealers and wait for the money to come rolling in. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

  Rolfe had been involved with a drug dealer named Gary from north London for about five years. When the cannabis from Amsterdam arrived in the country, Rolfe immediately contacted him and agreed to sell him £10,000 worth of the load. No money would change hands: Rolfe was going to give the cannabis to Gary on credit and collect the cash when the drugs had been sold. Rolfe trusted Gary. The pair had originally met in the Astoria nightclub in the West End of London. Rolfe started off buying Ecstasy from Gary for the friends he took to the club. Although theirs was really a business relationship, if Gary was in the club at the same time as Diane and Rolfe, they would spend the evening together. Rolfe enjoyed Gary’s company and they would talk for hours. After Rolfe had become involved with Tucker, the situation turned around and Rolfe ended up selling cannabis to Gary. This was Gary’s most frequent purchase, although he would buy whatever drugs he required from Rolfe, including cocaine, usually a half-ounce or an ounce at a time, depending on what was available and what was required.

  Because of Rolfe’s cocaine habit, if he was going to see Gary, Diane would generally ask him to wait for her to finish work so she could go with him. This was to prevent Rolfe from getting any cocaine and either using it there and then or bringing it home. On average, Rolfe visited Gary up to three times a week. Initially, Gary would meet Rolfe at a roundabout off the North Circular Road near Leytonstone. There was a small Greek grocer’s shop nearby, and the meetings took place in the car park. Later on, Rolfe would drive directly to Gary’s home and the deals would be done there.

  On the day Rolfe was due to deliver the cannabis to Gary, Diane, as usual, accompanied him. Diane watched as Rolfe walked to the front door with a holdall and knocked. Gary answered, acknowledged Diane in the car, then both he and Rolfe went inside. About five minutes later, Rolfe came out. Diane noticed he had left the holdall there and when she asked him what was going on, she didn’t really get a reply.

  In Braintree, Nicholls was also waiting for the money from the cannabis to start rolling in. He had supplied numerous dealers, who had been waiting for the consignment to arrive. Within a few hours, all the drugs Nicholls had for sale were gone. Pleased with himself that things had eventually worked out after several mishaps in Amsterdam, he sat back and prepared himself for a long, hard drinking session in his local pub to celebrate. Within minutes of his celebration starting, his phone began to ring.

  Elsewhere in Essex, Diane became aware that Rolfe was receiving an unusually high number of phone calls. When she asked him what was going on, Rolfe told her that the calls were regarding the cannabis being of poor quality. Diane could hear people shouting down the phone and could see that Rolfe was very aggravated. Eventually, Rolfe told her that all of the cannabis was being returned because it was rubbish.

  Nicholls was being told the same thing as Rolfe, although he initially refused to believe the callers. He said that he was not worried; in fact, he was pissed off. He accused the dealers of trying to rip him off. ‘You always get someone who wants to try it on,’ he later stated. ‘They buy some puff on credit, have a few joints and then try to pull one over on you by saying that it isn’t any good and they want you to cut the price.’

  Nicholls began to get aggressive with the callers, but they were equally vocal. They were adamant that Nicholls had sold them ‘shit, complete unsmokable cack’. Two in particular were extremely upset and threatened to have Nicholls bashed up. Nicholls finally realised that nobody was trying to rip him off and agreed to look into it for them. His celebrations were put on hold. When he sat back to think about the numerous mishaps in Amsterdam and Harris’s attitude towards him, he realised that Harris, annoyed by his lack of professionalism, must have loaded the boxes with dud cannabis.

  This was just the beginning of the firm’s troubles. Shortly before Nicholls’s trip to Amsterdam, the police had raided Club UK in south London. The whole operation was televised. There were more than 1,000 people in the club. Mark Murray’s dealers had thrown all of their pills and powders on the floor in order to escape arrest. Murr
ay lost 800 pills in total – pills for which he had not yet paid Tucker. Already in debt, it was estimated that Murray owed Tucker approximately £20,000. Prison would have been salvation for him.

  There are no financial advisers in the drug world and there are certainly no overdraft facilities. Tucker wanted his money and he wanted it immediately. He came round to my house with Rolfe and asked me where Murray was. I said I assumed that he was at home, so we all got into a car and went round to his house. His girlfriend answered the door. Rolfe pushed past her, went into the front room and asked, ‘Where’s Mark?’ She said she didn’t know. He asked if he had taken his phone with him. She said no, that he had left it at home. Rolfe picked it up, switched it on and started making calls.

  Tucker was sitting on the settee next to me. He was laughing. He pointed at the television and asked the girl, ‘Are you watching this programme?’ She said no, so he ripped the plug from the wall, wrapped it round the TV set and told Rolfe to go and load it and the stereo in the car, which he did. He then told Murray’s girlfriend she was coming with us. She was very frightened and said Mark would be home soon.

  ‘Don’t worry about that, get in the car,’ said Tucker. We all drove round to another man’s house. Fortunately, Tucker had forgotten why he had taken Murray’s girlfriend with us, that’s if he’d ever had a reason. I think he just did it to ensure she didn’t forewarn Murray that he was looking for him. Whatever, tired of waiting, we all went home.

  That night, Tucker and Rolfe returned to Murray’s flat. Tucker pulled out a huge bowie knife, grabbed Murray by the face and pressed the point into his throat. ‘I want my money, Murray,’ he said. ‘And for every week you owe me, you pay £500 on top. If I don’t get it, you’re dead.’

  Murray, terrified in the knowledge Tucker was more than likely to carry out his threat and equally concerned that his debt now carried interest, contacted everybody he knew asking for financial assistance. When people learned that Tucker was Murray’s creditor, they didn’t want to know. In desperation, Murray turned to a man he had recently met on the Essex club circuit.