Bonded by Blood

by Bernard O'Mahoney

  ‘Has he fucking damaged my bumper?’ Steele shouted after the caution had been read out. One of the other officers put his hand on Steele’s shoulder as if to try and calm him down. Steele turned and fixed his gaze on the officer. ‘Take your fucking hands off me, boy,’ he said. The officer immediately removed his hand. Jackie Street remained silent throughout.

  DS Sandford meanwhile had stopped the Transit van and run to the driver’s door. ‘You’re nicked,’ he said as he opened it. Peter Corry was then taken out of the vehicle and handcuffed. ‘You are under arrest for conspiracy to supply controlled drugs,’ he was told, then cautioned.

  ‘I don’t know what you mean, mate,’ countered Corry.

  Steele, Street and Corry were put into police vehicles and transferred to Colchester police station. Jack Whomes was at his yard cleaning the boat Steele had left there when Customs officers and police, some of whom were armed, approached him.

  ‘OK, Jack,’ one of them said, ‘put down the power washer.’

  ‘Actually, it’s a pressure washer,’ Jack replied. As he turned, he saw armed police officers crouching down, their weapons pointing at him. ‘Fucking hell, this is a bit heavy, isn’t it?’

  Jack was arrested, cautioned and transferred to Clacton police station. Nicholls meanwhile had been taken from Braintree police station to join Colin Bridge at Chelmsford. All the way there he was expecting his friend, DC Bird, to appear and tell the officers they had made a terrible mistake. Nicholls could imagine him saying, ‘No, this one’s OK, he’s on our side.’ But DC Bird was never going to come to his rescue: he too was going to be facing some awkward questions. Nicholls soon realised the only man who could save him now was himself. He decided he would give ‘no comment’ answers to all of the police questions until he knew exactly how strong their case was. Only then would he decide what path he was going to take. One thing was for sure: saving himself was top priority.

  At 9.16 p.m., Nicholls asked if he could speak to a nominated police officer who was known to him, but DS Storey declined the request. At 11.26 p.m. on the day of his arrest, Darren Nicholls was interviewed for the first time about the importation of cannabis. He said ‘no comment’ to all of the questions that were asked. At the end of the interview, DC Winstone, who was asking Nicholls the questions, said, ‘I don’t intend to say any more about the possession with intent to supply at the moment. The time by my watch is 23.35 hrs and you’re now going to be arrested for being involved in the murders of Pat Tate, Craig Rolfe and Tony Tucker. Do you wish to make any comment to the fact you’ve now been arrested for those murders?’

  After a pause, Nicholls replied, ‘No comment.’

  The following day, as the extent of the evidence against him began to be revealed, Nicholls realised he was in a hopeless position, but he still refused to comment when each question was asked. In addition to all of the Customs and police surveillance records – which now included video footage and still pictures – the police had access to his phone records. Additionally, Nicholls was the only person who had been caught in possession of drugs. Colin Bridge had been released after just two or three hours because it was clear to police he had played no active part in the drug-smuggling operation. Nicholls had told the officers that everything in the van was his so prosecuting Bridge would have been impossible.

  At the end of his second interview, DC Winstone said to Nicholls, ‘Last night you asked if you could speak to a police officer. Would you like to tell me who the police officer was?’

  Nicholls looked at DC Winstone and said, ‘No comment.’

  ‘All right, I can tell you that at the moment two police officers from Essex have been arrested and are currently in custody.’

  Nicholls’s jaw dropped. ‘Oh, fuck, I don’t believe it . . .’

  DC Winstone continued, ‘The officers have been charged with a number of offences including some linked to the possession of controlled drugs. We have evidence that you have had numerous dealings with one of the officers. Is there any comment you wish to make now?’

  ‘No, no fucking comment,’ Nicholls replied.

  As soon as the tape had been switched off, Nicholls asked to see a senior police officer. DS Barrington was summoned and Nicholls asked him if he were to give him the name of the police officer who had been arrested, would he confirm it? DS Barrington said that he would.

  ‘Is it DC Bird?’

  DS Barrington confirmed that it was.

  Nicholls told him that DC Bird was the reason he had got into all of this trouble. ‘I’ve been set up,’ he said.

  Nicholls knew that he was now facing the toughest decision of his life. If he managed to escape prosecution by the police, which was extremely unlikely, the fact that he was Ken Rugby, police informant, would come out and if he were sent to prison he would undoubtedly be in extreme danger. Even if he escaped imprisonment, all of the people in Braintree he had grassed on and set up would find out and he would have to move. There was no way out for him. Whichever path he took, he faced ruin.

  It was an established fact that Nicholls was DC Bird’s informant, so the police knew he wasn’t averse to informing on people, even friends. They also knew he had nowhere safe to turn, so they threw him a lifeline. If Nicholls could tell them who had murdered Tate, Tucker and Rolfe, he would become a witness and not a defendant. If he told police about the drug importations he was involved in and gave evidence against fellow smugglers, they would put him and his family on the witness protection programme. This deal would give him and his family a new identity, a new home in a new area, a completely fresh start in life. Nicholls didn’t hesitate: it was time to start talking.

  Chapter 13

  At first, Nicholls would only talk to the police about his association with DC Bird – how he had met him and how he had led him to the cannabis in the gravel pit, how the two innocent men had been set up for putting drugs there and about the reward he had received for his information. When it came to Nicholls’s own involvement in smuggling and selling drugs, he lied through his teeth. He claimed that he had only travelled abroad once and then his passport had expired, that he had never spoken to Harris, the Dutch drug dealer, and had never made any money from drugs. When Nicholls was asked whom he was working for, he blamed the men he had met in prison: Jack Whomes and Mick Steele.

  During one interview, Nicholls said that he had only become involved with DC Bird because he wanted Steele and Whomes – the men he was to allege had carried out the Rettendon murders – out of the way because they scared him. ‘I wanted them out of my life,’ he said. ‘I wanted to set them up.’ Until that point, Steele and Whomes had not been serious suspects in the murder investigation. An intelligence report compiled in the weeks after the murders had 167 entries. My name appeared more than a dozen times. Steele’s name appeared twice, with informants suggesting that he, as an associate of Tate’s, might know who carried out the killings. Jack Whomes’s name did not appear at all.

  Nicholls knew that almost any story he told concerning Steele and drug importation would be plausible because Steele was a convicted drug smuggler and Whomes was a good friend of Steele’s who happened to own a boat capable of crossing the Channel at speed. Add the fact that Nicholls had been seen picking up a toolbox containing drugs from Steele’s home address, and Nicholls had undoubtedly produced a believable story.

  After two days, Nicholls was moved to Rayleigh police station, where he began to tell detectives his version of events concerning the murders of Tucker, Tate and Rolfe. When asked why Steele and, in particular, Whomes – who had not even met Tucker and Rolfe – would want to murder the men, Nicholls said it was because when Tate was asked by ‘Billy and John’, the ‘IRA’ men, for their refund, Tate had insisted that Steele had their £40,000. The IRA men had then rung Steele and threatened him. Nicholls had learned of the calls while carrying out electrical work at Steele’s home. Unfortunately, neither Nicholls nor the interviewing officers realised the IRA men were undercover police. No
r did they remember the IRA men had only materialised six weeks after the murders. When this error was spotted, the IRA motive disappeared from Nicholls’s statements.

  Nicholls quickly offered the police a second motive. He claimed Steele was having an affair with Tate’s girlfriend, Sarah Saunders. Steele didn’t like the way Tate treated Saunders, so together they had decided to murder Tate. Saunders, the mother of Tate’s child, could claim his life insurance into the bargain. Of course, Sarah denied any affair or plot with Steele. No explanation was given as to why Tucker and Rolfe had to be murdered in this particular plot or why it would involve Whomes. In total, Nicholls made 20 separate statements. The police refused to disclose all of them to the defence because some were deemed not to be in the public interest.

  Eventually, it was decided that the dud cannabis that Nicholls had picked up in Amsterdam and later dumped in the gravel pit was the motive behind the murders. Nicholls told detectives it was Steele who had masterminded the importation of the cannabis that turned out to be dud. Nicholls merely worked for him, travelling to Stone’s Café in Amsterdam to purchase the drugs before Steele brought them into the country in an inflatable boat. Whomes, he said, met Steele when the boat arrived back in England. Following the importation of the dud cannabis, it was Nicholls who was given the job of dumping the drugs in the lake and he who was asked to travel to Amsterdam by Steele to recover Tate’s money.

  These were hardly ‘voluntary confessions’ about himself and his crimes. They were details Nicholls could not deny because he had used his credit card to pay for the trips. The telephone calls concerning his dealings with the detective had been monitored. The £400 reward for telling the officer where he had dumped the cannabis was a recorded fact and satellite signals for calls to and from his own mobile phone, which placed him at the murder scene at the relevant time, had been recorded by a nearby transmitting station. But for everything that couldn’t be pinned on himself, Nicholls blamed Steele.

  He said it was Steele who had fallen out with Tate, not him. ‘Tate was telling people he hadn’t received his money back from Steele and he was going to make Steele kneel down before shooting him.’ This particular claim made Steele very brave or very stupid because, according to Nicholls, it was Steele who travelled down the deserted lane in the Range Rover with Tate and two equally dangerous men, Tucker and Rolfe, whom Steele would have been aware had already murdered their friend Kevin Whitaker.

  Nicholls said Steele had told Tate a light aircraft was going to land a shipment of cocaine at Rettendon. Steele, Tucker, Tate and Rolfe were then going to rob it. This robbery was the job Tucker and Tate had asked me to assist them with when we met at Basildon hospital. I am pleased I turned down their offer and wasn’t in the Range Rover with them that night. Nicholls did tell police that there should have been a fourth man in the car, but he said it was to be a man named Spindler: somebody Tucker and Tate had no doubt recruited in my absence but who had also had the sense not to turn up. But, again according to Nicholls, there was no shipment: it was a baited hook and the trio took it. All this information was widely known amongst the criminal fraternity because Tucker and Tate had talked about the robbery to numerous people, including Nicholls.

  In the final interview, Nicholls said that at 5 p.m. on 6 December he met Whomes and Steele outside a motorbike shop in Marks Tey near Colchester. Nicholls got into Steele’s Toyota and they set off towards Brentwood. Whomes followed the pair alone in another car. At about 6 p.m., all three arrived at Thorndon Country Park. They parked their cars and Nicholls moved into Whomes’s car, on which he was trying – unsuccessfully – to stick false number plates. Steele drove off in his Toyota, and Whomes and Nicholls soon followed. At 6.15 p.m., the Toyota pulled into the car park of the Halfway House pub on the busy A127. Steele parked and told Whomes and Nicholls to find a space where they could watch him but couldn’t be seen.

  At 6.17 p.m., the Range Rover containing Rolfe, Tucker and Tate swept into the car park and pulled up next to the Toyota. Whomes and Nicholls then drove off and headed down the A127 towards Chelmsford. At 6.30 p.m., according to Nicholls, Steele pulled into the Hungry Horse pub car park at Rayleigh. Rolfe, Tucker and Tate had followed him there in the Range Rover. Steele climbed into the back of their vehicle with Tate and the four headed off to Rettendon.

  At 6.35 p.m. Nicholls dropped Whomes off at Workhouse Lane. Nicholls described Whomes as wearing overalls and new wellington boots, and carrying a large canvas tool bag. Nicholls turned the car around and parked at the nearby Wheatsheaf pub car park to await further instructions. At 6.47 p.m., the Range Rover turned into Workhouse Lane. Nicholls said the plan was to allow the Range Rover to drive into the open field under the pretence of showing Rolfe, Tucker and Tate where the ‘aeroplane’ was going to land. Once the men were in the open with nowhere to run, they were going to be gunned down.

  It was pitch-black as the Range Rover edged its way down the track. The vehicle eventually pulled up in front of a locked gate. Nicholls said Steele thought they had blown it, as he was expecting the gate to the fields to be open. Steele got out of the back of the Range Rover just as Whomes, who had been lying in wait near the gate, emerged from the bushes.

  Through the open rear door, Whomes fired the first of three shots, which would leave Tucker and Rolfe dead and Tate seriously wounded. Steele and Whomes, according to Nicholls, had made a pact whereby both men would fire shots into the victims’ bodies so one could not give evidence against the other. Whomes is said to have handed Steele a second shotgun and the orgy of violence continued. Nicholls said that during the shootings, Steele’s weapon fell apart. He took Whomes’s pump-action shotgun and shouted, ‘Give me some cartridges! Give me some cartridges!’, before shooting Tate through the head.

  When the shotguns fell silent, Tucker, Tate and Rolfe lay lifeless in pools of their own blood. Flesh, bone and brain tissue were splattered throughout the car interior. It was a horrific scene.

  Whomes is then said to have phoned Nicholls on his mobile. It is alleged he said, ‘All right, Darren. Come and get us.’ When Nicholls arrived at the lane, Whomes climbed into the back of the car. He was wearing surgical gloves and they were splattered with blood. Steele was delayed due to his shotgun falling apart. When he finally arrived, he got into the front passenger seat.

  Nicholls claims Steele said, ‘That’s sorted those fuckers out. They won’t be threatening me again.’ It was at that moment, Nicholls says, that he realised somebody had been killed. He said he was so shocked he nearly crashed into an oncoming car as he pulled out of the lane.

  Steele began handing over pieces of the gun to Whomes and repeatedly asked Nicholls if he was OK. Nicholls said Whomes laughed as he described Steele’s gun falling apart during the shootings. ‘Mick told me that Jack was a cold-hearted bastard because once Mick had got out of the Range Rover, Jack had shot them all immediately,’ he said. ‘Then he reloaded without any emotion and shot them all again in the back of the head.’ He said it looked as if it meant nothing to Jack. ‘Micky said he felt like the “angel of death”. Then he said, “We have done the world a favour. Nobody will miss them.”’

  Throughout his time in police custody, detectives were keen to keep Nicholls happy, particularly as he was being so helpful with their inquiries. They gave him a daily choice of takeaway meals: Kentucky Fried Chicken one day, taco chips the next. In his cell, they provided him with a colour TV, tables, chairs, a cabinet for his clothes and a multi-gym. He was even given a cup of hot chocolate before he went to bed at night. This special treatment was totally unwarranted when one considers that this was the man who had told police that he had plotted to have two innocent men locked up for the dud cannabis he had dumped.

  Once the police had taken Nicholls’s initial statements, he was told he would have to go to prison until the case reached court. Nicholls told the police that he was terrified of being kept in custody among the other inmates because he would be attacked and killed for being a gra
ss. The police explained to Nicholls that his family had been moved to a safe house and he would be going to a special unit within the prison system. This unit is for supergrasses only and the dozen or so inmates it houses are told to keep their identities from one another by staff. Instead of their real names, everyone is referred to as Bloggs followed by a number. Darren Nicholls, the drug dealer, and Ken Rugby, the grass, ceased to exist and in their place was born Bloggs 19.

  On 20 May, Steele and Whomes appeared at Chelmsford Magistrates’ Court charged with three counts of murder plus the importation of cannabis. Steele was also charged with possessing a pump-action shotgun. Tight security, involving armed police and dog handlers, surrounded the town centre court throughout the day. The road in front of the court was closed to traffic as Steele and Whomes, their heads shrouded with blankets, were taken to and from the building. Both were remanded in custody to appear before Southend Magistrates at a later date.

  Misery, misfortune and tragedy appeared to be affecting all the firm’s members and those who had worked alongside us at Raquels.

  On Thursday, 23 June 1996, Larry Johnston, a former fellow doorman and friend, fulfilled my grisly prediction and murdered a man. Larry stabbed a 31-year-old doorman named Stephen Poultney at a pub in Rush Green near Romford because he had been refused entry. An ambulance crew rushed to the scene where Mr Poultney lay bleeding to death from a stab wound to his left side, but they were too late to save him. Larry, himself only 32 years of age, was later sentenced to life imprisonment. Another waste of two young lives, and for what? A poxy argument about being let into a poxy pub. I was glad I was no longer inhabiting that world.