Inside I was rubbing my hands at the story, and I wanted a starring role. I didn’t really think Sangita was the right casting and I knew somebody would ask us why we hadn’t done this legitimately in the UK. Paul agreed that was perfect – and he knew the type of characters we were likely to be dealing with. Our plan was hatched – I appeared to be the only one who had thought it through, when actually, prior to the meeting, I hadn’t really thought about it all.
We gave Paul and Dom a week to come back with something concrete. In the meantime I began to cost up the trip. We would need an initial recce from Paul and Dom, then Sangita and I would fly out. It came in way over budget, but we farmed the idea out to radio, News 24 and the Ten, and shared costs. We were given a green light – subject to Paul and Dom doing the groundwork.
This was like nothing I had done before. I couldn’t wait to get started. What a story to tell your grandchildren – assuming I could get the right price for them in Bulgaria!
Paul and Dom were back a week later, now with specific targets to aim for. I told them it was the time to introduce me into the story – make sure you drop my name frequently into the conversation, keep this mythical figure alive, the dodgy East End car dealer who was coming in to buy. Our plan was to take it to the wire, and then go to the authorities.
By 16 June, Dom was in Sofia, working his underworld network, putting the word out that they were looking to buy a baby. They were well connected in the world of the shady and could be a bit slippery themselves. It was how you survived in that kind of world, and, of course, how they got this and other stories. A couple of days later, they set up shop in Varna, the third-largest city in the country, right on the Bulgarian Black Sea. It was here that they came across Harry.
He had been the first to take the bait. They met him at the petrol station adjacent to Varna’s central bus depot. Harry drove them south to his favourite resort at Kamchia Beach, to a soundtrack of his favourite Gangsta Rap. ‘Pump my Pussy’ was his personal favourite.
It was safe here – the tourists didn’t get out this way. Nor, clearly, did any serious musicians. In fact, he had laid his whole lifestyle on the table to the boys, wining and dining them, offering girls for company – not just any girls, ‘no dogs’, just pretty ones. Then he drove Dom and Paul through ‘Sexy Forest’ – £10 a time for a quick shag in the woods. What’s more, he seemed to be on first name terms with them all, pointing out his favourites lined up by the street. Either he knew them, or he had the controlling stake in the business. He confirmed the latter.
The lads said he was relaxed and happy – and clearly trusting – but they felt he wasn’t the main player. Someone was controlling him. He couldn’t wait for me to get over there. ‘I think it’s best if we get the baby and all the paperworks complete,’ he had confided. ‘That way gonna be no problem getting the baby out. I have my connections with the orphan house, the manager and the politicians. We can make this very quickly. Maximum three months. We’ll pay for all the paperworks to be like official documents. It will happen quickly. I believe in action not only talking.’
Added to this openness, astonishing so early in the piece, he had girls in his empire on the way to France, Belgium and Spain. He also had a team in Germany laundering some of the finest counterfeit cash we’d ever seen, guaranteed to fool over-the-counter checking devices. He wanted to lure Paul into taking this business into the Subcontinent, specifically India. I was clearly London’s meanest gangster, not to be messed with. He was a pimp and a trafficker. The underworld had sprung to life.
Paul rang back to London to say we were on. I needed to get out there as soon as – Sangita would come later. Craig Oliver agreed, much to my delight. Alison Ford, the Home News editor said it was a great idea. I was to leave the next day.
Sangita was slightly edgy. I got the distinct impression that she felt this guy from security was taking over. I assured her that this was the right way to operate – there was no way your dodgy East End gangster would take his young Indian wife out on the first meet. This was boys’ stuff and no place for the bird. Reluctantly, she saw it my way.
We all agreed that we would film our second meet – never film the first and never put too much on the table at the initial get-together. That was only about establishing trust and authenticity, and you couldn’t ever know who or what they would bring with them. If they gave us dynamite on day one, we would simply go over it again next time when we would be rolling. It was better to lose anything on the first night, rather than nearer the kill. I also told Paul that when I got off the plane, I expected the works. I only travelled in style and what I said went – I was at all times playing the Big Time Charlie.
When I landed in Varna, we were straight into character. Paul was a better actor than I had imagined! We couldn’t know if Harry’s people had eyes on the airport. Once I was through immigration, they took my bag off me like I was royalty and escorted me to the waiting car. There was no back-slapping ‘Hello, mate’; I was the boss at all times and should be addressed accordingly. In the car, Paul got in the front as the muscle; Dom sat next to me in the back. They had both notionally been on my payroll, shifting dodgy motors.
‘This is the boss,’ Paul told the driver. And they kept it up all the way into the five-star Kempinski Hotel, checking me in and taking my stuff up to the room. Only behind closed doors did we drop our guard.
‘Right, what’s the score?’ I asked.
‘Harry’s well excited, and we’re going to meet him tonight. He wants to meet you,’ Paul replied.
We re-confirmed there would be no filming, but gave ourselves the option of getting the gear later. We would meet in our reception, on home turf at 21.00. That way we were in control.
Paul was to ring to check he was on time. Dom told me that Harry normally came alone, turning up in his black Audi, all the rap music blasting out of the speakers. We would probably hear him before we saw him. I started to get into the zone, picturing this small-time crook and working out my questions in my head.
At half nine, Harry rang. I had deliberately commandeered a specific table in the reception, myself at the head, flanked on either side by Paul and Dom.
‘Hang on a minute, Harry,’ Paul said pretending to half cover the phone. ‘Boss, Boss, Harry’s gonna be late – half an hour,’ he went straight into the role.
‘You tell him from me, I haven’t got all fucking day. I haven’t flown all the way over here to be messed around. If he’s not here in half an hour, then we may as well not bother.’ I made sure I was loud enough. First impressions would count.
‘Harry, Harry, Boss not happy,’ Paul went back on the phone.
He had heard it all. ‘I’m just dealing with a problem,’ Harry replied.
We hung up. ‘That was excellent,’ Paul said. ‘That’s exactly what we need and that will keep him on his toes and he will come here to impress.’
One–nil.
I ordered a large G and T and sent Dom to the bar, indicating that next time he went I would produce a massive wad of euros to show Harry the player I was.
After ten, Harry arrived.
Around 5ft 11, he was stocky, muscular and had clearly worked out. I could tell it was him straightaway but I was disappointed. I was excepting 6ft 4, twenty stone and a monster. I knew, though, I would have him eating out of my hand before we had even been introduced.
Paul and Harry shook hands first.
‘Harry, this is the boss.’ Paul gestured towards me.
I handed Dom 2,000 euros in fifties. I could see Harry’s eyes light up. This was going to be a piece of piss. He started asking me little questions, mostly on cars, and I knocked him back with tales of Rolls and Porsches. I told him I didn’t rate Audis, just to wind him up. He said he recognised my London accent and knew I was genuine East End from his favourite film Snatch. I was one of the characters in it! It left me no choice but to compliment him on his average English.
He was either going to be the Real McCoy or a fu
cking idiot, and the only way to find out was to get into the role and mix it with him. I lived that part way too easily. My wife Sue always said I was such a good liar and she could never tell.
After half an hour of this bullshit, Harry wanted to move – he said the bar was boring. I didn’t read it that way. Moving location was an obvious move to first base – there was a deal to be done. I hadn’t put any scouts out around the hotel. I believed he had come alone, but I will never know. In the confines of a five star and with three of us against him, I was happy to hand him the control that I had sought when we had pitched up at the bar.
Agreeing with Paul and Dom, I didn’t think he was the big cheese either. I had clocked him as some middleman. We might have to deal with someone else higher up, or might never meet them. Someone was definitely pulling his strings. That would be how these things normally panned out. Harry either trusted us or saw pound signs. Regardless, Harry’s Game had begun.
He drove us to the Timbuktu Restaurant – he wanted to eat but I think it was part of the process in checking us out, moving us into various locations, making sure we were real too.
In the car, Harry was relaxed. His body language indicated trust – he was laughing with us.
‘This isn’t fucking music,’ I bantered with him. ‘Come on mate, turn it down.’
‘Boss not happy, Harry,’ Paul would chip in.
The pussy was being pumped again, and it showed no signs of relenting.
I started talking cars with him again, taking the piss out of his Audi, throwing him the odd carrot now and then. ‘If everything goes well, we might be able to do a bit of business together,’ I teased him. With all dodgy people, one bent deal could lead to another, whatever you had come looking for initially. I knew he was eating out of my hand.
Then he pulled up by a car park. He was checking us again. Two muscular blokes were waiting for us. ‘They work for me,’ Harry told us.
‘You’re not sussing us out are you, Harry?’ I made him feel like he was in control.
‘Nah, nah, if Paul tells me you are the boss man, then you are the boss,’ he joked.
At the restaurant, I made sure I sat right next to the little weasel, with Dom and Paul opposite, my shrimp and salad nothing more than a prop to open him up. I was a fat bastard, I didn’t eat salad and it didn’t take long.
He was lining me up for bigger things and repeat visits. He promised me that a Formula One racetrack was going to be built locally – this would be an economic boom for the pair of us.
‘If you can do this for me, I will show you my appreciation. It’s very important to me,’ I bullshitted.
‘I am the same,’ he replied. ‘Craig, I will do this for you.’
I was talking bollocks of course. Since that very first day working with Nick Witchell, the story was all I cared about.
‘Have you been to England?’ I asked him.
‘No, Ireland,’ he explained.
‘What have you been doing in Ireland?’ I probed, knowing I was opening up his little trade routes.
‘A bit of business. I’ve got a few vans over there, moving stuff around … just stuff.’
He spoke like a crook. They always referred to stuff. His wife, from whom he was separating, also lived there. Or so he said. He told me he had already got the ball rolling. His man in Turkey had fixed the orphan house. Those words alone told me that, at this speed, this was a regular operation. ‘My man in Turkey’ for fuck’s sake – that’s a different country and he’d only met Paul and Dom the other day. Clearly, I was just another customer.
‘Do you like the ladies?’ he asked.
‘Course I do. What bloke doesn’t?’
We were moving on fast. When the crooks start taking you to their clubs, it’s game on.
‘The boss’s wife is very beautiful, Harry.’ Paul kept the story on track.
‘Yeah, yeah, we’ll just go have some drinks and watch some nice women dance,’ he protested.
‘Yeah, I’m having some of that. What goes on tour stays on tour,’ I joked.
We walked round the corner from the restaurant onto the main drag. I thought three of us were too many to be going into some seedy unknown nightclub. While Harry was chatting up his bouncer mate on the door, I told Paul to make his excuses and get back to the hotel and stick by the phone in case anything kicked off. Dom confirmed that he wasn’t tired and was definitely up for girls! Even though I was on Harry’s turf, I felt comfortable. The boys had bigged me up so much that all he wanted to do was impress, probably by now already dreaming of ditching that Audi for a Porsche.
‘Come on, Harry, that’s a bit insulting,’ I complained as the bouncers patted us down on the way in. It was the club rules, but nobody else got the treatment. That’s why we didn’t bring the covert equipment. On a second visit, they might trust us and wouldn’t have to do the rigmarole, but on the first night, this was new territory to us, and we couldn’t know where we would end up.
He led us down some steps into a dark and dingy, basement area. Neon lights were the new thing here! Add to that carpets which hadn’t been changed in twenty years and you couldn’t get much seedier.
‘I wish we had the camera on,’ I said to Dom, as some bikini-clad tart in a thong came rushing up to Harry as she had probably done a thousand times before, attracted to his perceived power, unless it was part of a routine, choreographed act to entrap us. Only dodgy people doing deals came this way, and Harry, by the ease with which this all panned out, had brought many a bent geezer here before. For a moment we mooted buzzing Paul to get him back, but ultimately it wasn’t worth the risk.
‘I’ve fucked her and I’ve done her.’ Harry showed us his totty portfolio. ‘Would you like me to arrange something?’ As he spoke, he was summoning one of his bitches for a dance on Dom. You can see, can’t you, just how tough, life on the BBC payroll was.
‘Nah nah, I’m a bit tired tonight; maybe another night,’ I replied when offered.
He promised us a party at his place – probably just as well. He clearly had a lot of friends in this gaff. You always knew in surveillance when all eyes were on you. Harry took us next door and this time we were ushered in – no pat-downs. This club wasn’t busy but we’d climbed another rung on his ladder. No need to check us out twice. We were still being monitored though – a thick-set man in a red t-shirt was clocking us from the end of the bar. The scouts were out.
It was Harry’s turn to flash the cash – large shots of green apple Schnapps flowing like there was no tomorrow. Then he raised the stakes. He motioned me to the bogs. ‘Do you like a bit of the old [sniff] powder?’
‘What do you mean?’ I quizzed him. Course, I knew what he was on about.
‘Charlie,’ he replied.
I reckon he had watched this scene in some pirate Bob Hoskins rubbish. ‘Yeah, I don’t mind a bit of Charlie,’ I responded.
He unwrapped the tin foil like an expert. It was already in powder form. Out came the credit card. I realised now that of all the things I had seen, all the risk assessments I had been made to fill in, all the stupid courses which I had bullshitted my way out of, there was nothing under the heading ‘Snorting coke in the bogs with the Bulgarian mafia’. Fuck – what was I meant to do? Either I had to do it, or risk losing face. I was in the role. That meant it was in the job description. I would deal with London when I got back.
If I had to do it, I had to do it.
‘I’m not using that fucking dirty rolled up note you’ve just used Harry; I’ll roll my own,’ I conspired. Fuck me, what would Nicholas Witchell have done in the same situation?! I couldn’t get out of it. I was a big-time bent gangster from the East End who did dodgy things. Of course I was a cokehead.
I rolled up a fifty-euro note. I bent down over the marble surface, ready to whack it up my nose. ‘Is this good shit Harry?’ Like I gave a shit.
‘Yeah, very good … the best,’ Harry replied.
Bang. The toilet door barged open. It was Dom.
In that split second that I was about to take one up the nostril on behalf of the Beeb, my mate barged in. We hadn’t planned it. I didn’t even give a thought to the greater consequences with my employer.
The door that led to the loo also took you outside. We hadn’t talked through what we would do if one of us got separated and isolated. I blew it away off the top of the wrapper, and twitched my nose.
‘That is good shit, Harry,’ I lied.
‘Very good, very expensive, Boss,’ he confirmed. It looked like fine flour.
Dom hadn’t even known we were in the toilet. ‘I don’t think you realise how perfect your timing was,’ I said to him on the way out.
‘I was just concerned,’ Dom told me.
‘That was brilliant,’ I told him, buzzing. ‘You saved me from having to do a line of coke.’
And I would have done it, too. For the story. I was living off the adrenalin. Had anybody on the BBC payroll ever gone this far for the story since Donal MacIntyre around the new millennium? I loved the idea that I could put in the receipts next month for all the dodgy contraband I had bought and consumed for the most famous broadcasting organisation in the world. I wouldn’t of course – these kind of characters left very little paper trail.
Dom had played a blinder, unzipping his flies, and carrying on as though it was business as usual. Harry had pushed past him on the way out. Dom mouthed ‘OK?’ to me, and we both exited back towards the stage area. I don’t know if Harry was topping himself up after an earlier hit but he was on hot coals now, unable to sit still, eyeing up his shag for the night while recounting his previous conquests.
‘Are any of these girls available to ship back to England?’ I asked.
Bodyguard Page 13
