Then Kenny wanted another club: the Buzz club, where all the footie players and the Spice Boys used to go and that. So Heath did the business there. Haase ordered a drive-by shooting around Christmas 1998 using a beige Peugeot 205 which he bought for the job that day. A security guard got shot in the hand. [Chris No-Neck later revealed that the actual gun person was a female assassin called The Horsebox.]
Then Haase hit on the idea of actually robbing the pubs and clubs he was meant to be protecting. He actually done the heists himself with a shooter and a balaclava. I couldn’t believe it. One of the country’s top villains, worth millions, doing blags, but he got a buzz out of it. I think it took him back to his youth, like a proper villain again instead of some fucking drug-dealing fucking organised-crime king sat behind a desk.
On another occasion, he robbed a club owned by a fella who was well connected to the Bhoys – the IRA. In May ’99, he planned to rob a ‘hole in the wall’ in Skelmersdale and use a shopping trolley as a getaway with all the money in it.
Then I started to get close to the real action – drugs. I began to see kilos of drugs being ferried in and out of Haase’s office. He used to use a half-caste student as a courier. One day, they were sat at his desk and in the middle was four bag-of-sugar-sized parcels of beigish, off-white powder. It was heroin.
One of the Turks Haase used to deal with kept phoning the office. His name was Yilmaz Kaya. But Haase wouldn’t take the call. Then his sister kept phoning up. Haase just blanked it. Haase said that he owed their family money and that’s why he was fucking them off.
By July ’98, Haase had gone security mad – he had an infrared, see-in-the-dark CCTV camera installed on his flat and a fuck-off iron gate behind the main door. He ripped the camera off Ben’s house after he wouldn’t pay for it. He started wearing a stun gun he’d bought for £65 around the office.
At the end of August ’98, I told my handler that Bennett was looking for a map with coordinates on it so he could land a helicopter there [at the coordinate reference, the site of a prearranged drugs handover], presumably with a load of gear on it as part of a drug deal he was setting up. Haase thought it was a wild idea. Shortly afterwards, Bennett went to Belgium to check on a container, presumably for a deal.
Haase used to use all kinds of silly codewords for drugs. For instance, one day Haase asked me to pass on a message to someone that he wanted four videos of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which I believed to be drugs, probably coke. He was paying 20s for a kilo. By February, the code was ‘shirts’. That was then sold by No-Neck. He was selling bush cannabis as well. That day, he also got the main gates fortified with barbed wire – again paranoid about security. A few months later, in December, he had extra steel bars and locks put on all the doors after personally examining every point of entry and exit on the Stanley Dock building. He was getting more and more paranoid, carrying a cosh around the office and asking me to be at his side or nearby all the time. He started using a walkietalkie to communicate with all his guards in and outside the building. They were under instructions to tell him about every visitor.
In November 1998, the half-caste lad delivered a load of gear in a black rucksack. But Haase went mad and said it was £60,000 worth of shit. Around then, the crew were making a lot of dough – millions. There was always money. Haase was making millions off ’ve the ciggies. Literally fucking millions. That’s what the Customs could never work out. Was making fucking 20 times more off ’ve the ciggies than heroin and cocaine. No cargo was less than fifty grand’s worth. The profit was 1,000 per cent, week in, week out.
One time, Heath was sent to Scotland to pick up £22,000 in cash for a ki of brown and some other bits and bobs. Then, on another day, Haase had off £500,000 worth of designer clobber, which was in a lorry going to a big shop in the city centre. Then one day, Haase bought a .38 mm handgun off ’ve one of the doormen, along with 100 rounds of ammo. Was purely meticulous in his armament deals, he was. Sat there and counted out every fucking bullet on his desk, until he was convinced that he hadn’t been ripped off. Then he went downstairs in the cellar of the dock and pinged off a few rounds.
On his contact sheets, Paul gave details about Haase’s obsession with elaborate security procedures. One week, he had his main gates fortified with barbed wire and on another, Bennett got an anti-bug device for him to use. But by December 1998, Grimes was reporting to Customs that Haase was becoming increasingly upset with Bennett for letting him down on deals. Before Christmas, Grimes told Customs that No-Neck was expecting a delivery of heroin. During this time, Haase was using the codename ‘Christmas trees’ to describe heroin.
PAUL GRIMES: In March ’99, Haase asked me to take over his security company because he couldn’t front it due to his convictions. But I had convictions as well, so I had to think about it.
John was doing a lot of gun-running to a firm in Scotland, but because of all the fucking chaos, I could never get a hangle on it. But Heath kept telling me how it worked – cos he was right in the thick of it. Was simple. Every time the Jocks wanted shooters, they sent a bagman down to Liverpool. Heath got the gear off ’ve Haase and he drove out to meet the crazy Jocks on his motorbike.
Everything was being captured on tape. I kept warning Heath to get out but he was now more loyal to Haase than to me. By May 1999, I was at the end of my tether with him. I told my handlers that I didn’t give a fuck whether the info I was giving them got him nicked as well.
Unaware that Paul Grimes was an informant, Chris No-Neck got on with the day-to-day business of violence, robbery and drug dealing.
CHRIS NO-NECK: The Horsebox, the female shooter he used, used to call Haase ‘Dracula’ because every six to eight weeks he’d need some claret to pacify him. John was a villain. He needed to see blood. On a job, Haase would steam straight in. One job we knocked on the door and the fella answers. Haase goes ‘Uuuuggghh!’ [a battle cry before attacking him]. One of us has a Magnum.
On another job at a flat in Tuebrook, John and Kenny Doorteam went to lean on someone. It ended up with John putting one in a fella’s leg. Kenny turned around and Haase was already down the road. Some of the other jobs he asked me to go on were too risky.
Now, on jobs he put my way, I could have said, ‘Yes, I’ll do it 100 per cent,’ or, ‘No.’ I’ve never been in-between. I’d weigh the plot up. Now he wanted us to do the Cream [mount an armed robbery on the superclub Cream]. Now the Cream was in a square. There were several cameras on it. Now he wanted us to wrap the bird up [tie up the manageress], take the printer [the till], empty the printer and fuck off. And there would have been a tidy few quid there. But it would have been ontop because the roads are camera’d up to fuck down there. He said, ‘Are you doing it?’
I said, ‘No. I’ll do a job I know I can get in and out on. The Cream is 75 per cent ontop and I’d rather have the odds on my side.’
Now that Haase was out of prison and back ontop, Haase and No-Neck set about the business of settling old scores against disloyal gangsters who had tried to have him off while in jail. First on the hit-list were the tax men, otherwise known as The Hyenas, who took advantage of Haase’s incarceration by attempting to steal his money. The tax men had attacked Haase’s men in their homes.
CHRIS NO-NECK: The tax man Flannagan had been wrapping people up [kidnapping them], burning them, right. He was a dog. They went for Haase and took his money. After Haase was out, Flannagan came to see me and John with his mate. I was leaning on the car. Flannagan goes, ‘What’s all this?’ meaning that he’d heard that I was looking for him [for revenge].
Then it was like a schoolyard, you know, when two kids run off. Scarpered, they did. I ran after them on me own. Caught up with him. Hit him. I thought, ‘He’s too fucking big to let up.’ So I just fucking caned him. Flattened me knuckle on the cunt. Broke my hand. I had Flannagan – pounding him. I never done it for Haase. He burnt my young mate as well, who grafted for me. He burnt him with an iron and took his dough off him. When
I dealt with him, his mate was standing there with a fucking iron bar. I was watching the other cunt as I’m banging Flannagan. And he come at me with an iron bar. I goes ‘Aaaah!’ and he shits himself. I was going to take the bar off him and ram it down his fucking throat. [Then Haase allegedly joined in and cut Flannagan’s throat with a knife.] I didn’t see the man do it. He waited until Flannagan was unconscious.
Later, the police recorded Haase bragging about beating Flannagan and going back to his beaten body on the floor six times to hit him again.
JOHN HAASE (on the police tape): He [Flannagan] ran. We caught him after about four yards. He went down fuck off. [Laughter.] The other fella got up the road and pulled a big crowy out. So I had a go back at him: ‘Come on, come on!’ It was crunch. Then back to Flannagan. His head on the floor. It was twenty past eight. All the neighbours are out. You want to see No-Neck’s hands with fucking knocking him on the head and that. No-Neck had him on the floor. I just bent over and just kept my hand in. [Haase was possibly armed with a Stanley knife.] His face was bleeding. Smashing his hands and feet. Six times I went back.
Afterwards, Haase feared a revenge attack by Flannagan, so he personally took his henchman Heath Grimes to Flannagan’s home address and told him, ‘If anything happens to me, make sure Flannagan gets it.’ But Heath didn’t really want to get involved.
On 10 June 1999, Bennett went on the run after the cannabis ring he was operating on the side was smashed by Operation Octagon in London, Liverpool and Spain. Bennett had been busy using the cannabis to make a fast buck to pay off his drug debts – he still owed £150,000 to The Iceman, whom Haase had threatened to acid-bath.
Customs officers who were part of Operation Octagon now wanted to question Bennett in connection with a large importation of cannabis. The other eight men in the gang had been arrested. According to Paul Grimes, Haase had £10,000 invested in the deal and expected 25 kilos of cannabis from Ben. Ben’s escape had been nothing short of miraculous – fuelling suspicions that Customs had purposely alerted him because he was an informant. As the officers waited at his front door, Bennett vaulted over the back wall of his house and escaped along a railway line while his girlfriend quickly burned mobile-phone records. His Second World War escape, coupled with the fact that his arrest warrant was subsequently not enforced, as Bennett freely walked around Liverpool even though he was supposed to be on his toes, led Haase to suspect that Bennett was informing on him.
A couple of months later, he returned to Haase’s HQ to work on a cannabis skunk farm in the basement. The CPS later denied that Bennett had given any ‘formal assistance’ to the authorities, leaving the possibility that he was briefing them ad hoc, that he was providing off-the-record information to Octagon officers. Bennett then moved to a safehouse in Scotland from where he commuted to Liverpool.
For Haase, the bottom line was simple – Bennett’s misfortune was the beginning of the end for him. On 22 June 1999, Customs recorded Haase telling a drug dealer called Derek about Bennett. He said, ‘He’s been using people in Spain without checking them out. They give you gear and then blow you off.’ He also suggested that Bennett might be a police informant, hinting that he was involved in the case of a drug dealer who had recently been jailed for ten and a half years. Bennett later tried to wriggle out of the accusation, saying that he had inside info on the case only because he’d been tipped off by his solicitor Tony Nelson that the suspect was under surveillance. But in the same conversation, Haase didn’t let Ben’s misfortune interrupt business, as would have been wise. He should have closed down shop for a while. Instead, he told Derek that three kilos of heroin were available ‘for big dough’, while cockily singing the words, ‘Here I am, baby.’
However, as a precaution, Haase began distancing himself from Bennett. He was not only suspicious because of Octagon, but also because a large number of recent illegal deals involving Bennett had got smashed by the law. According to Ben’s right-hand man Barry Oliver, Haase had every reason to be suspicious. Oliver claimed that Bennett was now trying to frame Haase for gun-running, to trade off with the authorities.
Other businessmen use their briefcases to carry documents. But on 27 July 1999, Haase was carrying two and a half kilos of cannabis, which he was trying to sell for £8,500. Even while he was on the run, Ben was regularly calling Haase to get money and favours. He asked Haase to send some boys to Strangeways to help the cannabis gang, who were on remand.
Meanwhile, Haase’s gun-running operation was spiralling out of control. He was supplying so many guns to villains in Scotland that the Glasgow godfathers were blaming Haase for single-handedly starting wars. Ken Darcy said, ‘On the one hand, the Scots loved buying guns off him. But on the other, they were getting worried because everyone was getting shot.’
Sources in the gang claimed that Haase had got many of the guns over the years through Bennett, who was buying them direct from terrorists in Northern Ireland. As part of their gunrunning operation, Bennett had recruited the ex-con and former electrician Barry Oliver onto Haase’s firm and made him feel indebted by giving him a job, a house, a car, £1,000 worth of clothes and regular spending money. Bennett employed Oliver as a maintenance man for his property empire, babysitter for his kids, personal trainer and chauffeur – Ben was banned from driving. Oliver, then thirty-seven, had been sentenced to eight years in 1994 for manslaughter. Oliver was determined to go straight but he claimed that Bennett began threatening him with death if he didn’t take part in gun deals.
Another gun-runner, based on the Wirral, was also supplying Haase. But on 1 June 1999, during a run to drop off a boot-full of weapons destined for Haase, he was nicked at the entrance to the Mersey Tunnel. Other associates of Bennett’s included Toxteth tax man The Iceman and Scottish hard-man Ian McAteer, later jailed for killing drug dealer Walter Selkirk in a horrific assassination while Selkirk’s children waited in the car. McAteer later blamed Bennett for setting him up.
According to Oliver, one day in July 1999, Bennett hatched a plot to set Haase up by buying a load of guns off him – and shopping Haase at the same time to the authorities in order to get his own Octagon warrant quashed. Bennett allegedly forced Oliver under threats of death to act as intermediary in the sale of guns between Haase and himself. The guns would then be sold by Bennett to the Scottish Connection. Oliver had been trying to back out by turning off his mobile and moving to a new address with his girlfriend Karen. But desperate Bennett had quickly tracked him down and flew into a vicious, threatening rage outside Oliver’s house.
At the end of July, Oliver allegedly visited Ben in Glasgow to collect the £1,000 transport money to be given to Haase for the guns. Oliver claims that Haase was expecting another £5,000 for the guns themselves. Paul Grimes did not know about Ben’s alleged conspiracy against Haase – he was busy hatching his own.
PAUL GRIMES: In April ’99, Haase hid four guns, three pistols and a sawn-off at the dock. Heath was telling me everything. One day, he told me that a load of guns had been sold to a guy in Stoke.
Heath and Haase used to go into the basement to test them. One day, they fired off an Uzi and a Magnum. Heath told me that Haase, even though he was a top gun-runner, wasn’t actually a good shot. He had difficulties with the safety catches.
Then in August ’99, Heath told me that the next shipment was on the cards. This was the first time he’d told me about a delivery before it went off. Get paid. I gee’d the Customs up good style and told them to be ready. Then Heath went away on holiday. He must have thought it would go off when he got back, but suddenly the Jocks wanted their firearms. They must have had a blag planned or whatever.
It could’ve easily been done without Heath, but by this time Haase thought so much of him that he put it off until he got back. Could not understand it, la. Only needed someone on a bike. But Haase was insistent – want Heath, la. No back answers.
When Heath got back, John was made up. Then, on 7 September, Haase called me and said, ‘Get down t
he dock for twelve.’
When I got there, he just told me to stay on the gate. Another one of the lads, called Barry Oliver, was guarding the door. Heath arrived on his bike. He told me he was doing a gun drop to the Jocks. He went in Haase’s office and when they both come out, Haase put a small bag on top of the bike’s petrol tank. That was it. Heath got off.
Fifteen minutes later, Heath comes back after delivering the guns to the Scottish courier. For delivering the guns, which would get him four years in jail, Heath said he was paid just £50. I says to John immediately that I’m getting off, jumps in the van and fucks off. Outside the dock, I phoned Customs and give them the gen.
Paul was not privy to how his information was actually used by Customs and the police. But at about the same time as he was ringing in his intelligence to Customs, the police had stopped the car driven by the Scottish courier. A sports bag containing an Uzi sub-machine gun and a Dirty Harry-style Smith & Wesson Magnum revolver was recovered from the front passenger foot-well. The ammunition included 49 rounds of .38 mm bullets and 170 rounds of .9 mm, including 70 dumdum-style hollow-point bullets designed to wreak havoc in the body on impact.
In the run-up to the seizure, the police had been on alert to catch the gun dealers red-handed. They had been given a warning by Paul Grimes several weeks beforehand that a gun deal was in the offing and possibly had supplementary intelligence supplied by Paul Bennett. In addition, a Customs surveillance team had video cameras trained on the main entrance to the office to watch the comings and goings. A very useful picture had been built up.
Druglord Page 31
