Good Cop, Bad War

by Neil Woods

  I sipped my pint as Deano disappeared, returning with a little baggie. I slid him thirty quid and Phil and I made our exit.

  Even if we had wanted to bust Deano right there, he probably wouldn’t have gone to jail.

  We sent his pills down to the lab and it turned out they contained zero per cent MDMA, but were actually just a mixture of ephedrine and ketamine. At the time both of these were controlled substances, but not actually illegal.

  As it happened though, this gave me the perfect way in.

  ‘All right mate. Those pills you gave us weren’t bad. I like ’em with a nice speedy edge.’

  Of course I hadn’t taken any of Deano’s pills, but I did know they were exactly 68% ephedrine, so of course they’d be a bit speedy. I was marking myself out not just as a buyer, but as a connoisseur.

  ‘Oh you like a bit of the old amphets, d’ya?’ Deano gave a nod of acknowledgement.

  ‘Mate, I love a decent bit of powder. But there’s fuck all around here – it’s all shite. I’ll take 250 more of those pills if you can get ’em, though.’

  ‘Yeah, 250’s no bother mate. Give us two ticks.’ Once again he disappeared to a room upstairs, returning a few minutes later with a big bag of his little blue tablets.

  From there on in Phil and I became regulars at the Lord Stanley. We were probably the handiest pool players on the Derbyshire force, and were soon playing the Lord Stanley boys for twenty-pound pots, using pool table banter to work our way in.

  Then, a few weeks in when we’d all had a few beers, Phil jokingly asked Deano how he’d got the scar on his face.

  ‘Well,’ Deano replied breezily, ‘some bloke beat me at pool so I smashed the cue over his head. I just didn’t realise he had a couple of mates there who took me out the back and done this.’

  Phil and I shared a quick glance, and promptly let Deano win the next couple of games.

  Intimations of horrific physical violence aside, though, Deano and his mates were actually quite a good laugh. They could all tell a story, and their rough humour wasn’t actually a million miles from that of Bomb Damage and the Drugs Squad lads – it just happened to be told from the opposite perspective.

  We kept buying pills and started moving into coke as well, picking up plenty of Intel as we went along. But we hadn’t yet made any progress towards Alec. He was always around, holding court in his little corner, but there was no way we could approach him directly. We needed to bide our time and wait to be invited in.

  Deano was pissed.

  He and his mates were sat round a table heaving with empty glasses, all three sheets to the wind. We walked in in the middle of a story.

  ‘… So this cunt that owes us two grand, yeah,’ Deano slurred drunkenly, ‘his thing is robbing phone boxes, yeah… but now everyone’s starting to get mobiles, he can’t make what he owes. Something may have to be done.’

  The whole table roared with laughter.

  ‘Ah yeah,’ I cut in, ‘I used to do a bit of the old phone boxes but the cunts figured out the security too well. It’s not even worth the effort these days… but you know what is?’ I leaned in and hushed my voice. ‘Pay and display parking machines.’

  ‘You what?’ asked Deano incredulously.

  ‘Seriously – you know those machines at pay and display car parks? They work the same as phone boxes did five years ago. The companies barely even send anyone to empty them – so if you get ’em at the right time, you can make a few hundred quid off each one.’

  This scam came straight out of the Derbyshire CID case files. It was a real crime they’d busted someone for the previous year. I’d just appropriated it for our own cover story. Through his pissed haze, Deano gave an approving nod and took a thoughtful sip on his pint.

  Three days later, while Phil was playing one of the other guys at pool Deano waved me over.

  ‘Keith, this is Alec. Tell him again about that car park thing you were on about.’

  There he was, staring me down through thick Elvis Costello-style glasses with an expression of total blank inscrutability. I launched into another description of the pay and display scam, raking my memory to get the facts right while also keeping the delivery casual and off-the-cuff.

  I had studied the case like a true geek, and was able to fill in authenticating technical detail on how the car park machines worked. A cover story lives or dies on its detail. The more specific, the better the lie holds.

  I finished up and Alec just looked at me. One second passed. Then several more. His face was completely unreadable. Alec let the silence sit for significantly longer than was comfortable. Then he leaned forward and quietly asked, ‘Who did you say you were again?’

  ‘Ah, he’s all right Alec, he’s bought about a thousand pills off me already,’ cut in Deano.

  Alec’s head snapped round. Deano immediately fell silent under his gaze.

  I defused the situation, mumbling about being from up Sheffield way and down here because of trouble with the missus. Alec nodded slowly and motioned me to sit down. Then the questions started. Who was I selling the pills to? In which prisons had I done time? What other scams was I involved in?

  By now Phil had come over to join us, and we bounced off each other like an experienced double-act. As with Hal in Sheffield, I could sense Alec testing us, going back over the same question in a slightly different way each time to see if we changed our story.

  Throughout the interrogation, Alec would frequently disappear to ‘his office’, returning a minute later rubbing his nose and getting a little more excited each time. This guy was obviously very into his coke.

  We must have passed the test – or perhaps he was just getting very high – but two hours later Alan had not only tried to recruit us to run pay-and-display knock-over scams, he’d also offered to sell us two stolen antique tables, a vanload of wide-screen TVs and a MAC-10 automatic pistol.

  Alec was hard to keep up with. He had a manic intensity, jumping from one subject to the next at lightning speed, but simultaneously keeping every tiny detail present in his mind. But it was drugs we were after.

  ‘Actually mate, what we need is an ounce of charlie… and a little bit of rock if you can get it.’

  ‘Oh that’s no bother,’ he replied, ‘I can grab all that next time I’m up north. Say – you lads after a motor? I’ve got a BMW 3 series, a red Mitsubishi Shogun and a sweet little Mazda all going. I’ll do you a deal ’n all.’

  ‘Actually mate, I might be interested in the Shogun,’ Phil chipped in, ‘let’s chat next time, yeah.’ It would have looked odd if we were just after drugs and nothing else.

  ‘Yeah, no bother. Just come back Thursday.’

  We were in.

  So, that Thursday, Phil and I found ourselves chain-smoking out in the Lord Stanley’s car park, until Alec finally screeched up in a flash green Audi. He leapt out of the car and grabbed my arm, even more manic than before, talking a thousand miles a minute.

  ‘Mate, mate, mate… sorry yeah, sorry… I smoked your rock on the way down. I’ve got your charlie yeah, and I had the rock, yeah… but I just smoked it. I smoked it, yeah. I’ll get more, yeah but I smoked that bit.’

  Through this torrent we managed to work out that Alec had gone off to pick up a big package, including our coke and crack, but had got so excited on the way back down that he’d smoked it all himself.

  What can one say? The man liked his rock.

  ‘Mate, mate – I’m going back on Saturday, so no bother – I can get your crack then. Tell you what though? You still interested in that Mitsubishi? I’ve got another two BMWs on the go and a fucking Jag too. Any motor you’re after I can get it – no bother.’ Alec was seriously wired. We held off on the cars, but set a plan to meet the following Saturday for the crack.

  But, when Saturday rolled around, exactly the same thing happened. Alec jumped out of the car, high as a kite, manically apologising for smoking all the rock and trying to sell us more stolen cars. The guy just couldn’t help h
imself: if there was crack in his car, he was smoking it.

  This happened again and again. He would sell us pills, coke and smack by the ounce, but every time we wanted crack, he’d have smoked it by the time we met. It became a running joke for the other guys on the Drugs Squad.

  Aside from his taste for crack, though, Alec was quite an extraordinary guy. He had an intense, manic charisma that was at once captivating and terrifying. It was easy to see why Alec had become the kingpin at the Lord Stanley. When he spoke, you listened. He dealt in stolen antiques, and had teams of break-in artists recruited from the Irish traveller clans working all over the country. Through this he had become a real expert, and would deliver long lectures on the precise craftsmanship of a Chippendale cabinet or Wedgwood vase. Being a bit of a history geek, I was able to win his favour and trust by filling in bits of knowledge on the Industrial Revolution around Yorkshire and the Midlands.

  Over time we actually became quite good mates. We’d spend hours over pints at the Stanley, as I tried to keep up with his coke-fuelled boozing. I kept up my role as a mid-level hustler, adapting the more interesting scams from the police archives to my needs. One of the key character tics I continued developing from my first encounter with Deano was that I was a serious speed fan, and a connoisseur of all things amphetamine.

  Alec was also obsessed with cars. Every time Phil or I hung out with him he would have a new set of vehicles on offer – a Mercedes here, a couple of Saabs or Toyotas there. It got to the point where one day, when I felt loose enough after a few pints, I turned and asked, ‘Alec, how the fuck do you have all these motors coming through all the time? What’ve you got going on?’

  The change was instant and shocking. His head snapped round with a hyper-aggressive glare, ‘Why the fuck do you want to know what I’m up to? What the fuck is that to you?’

  ‘All right, mate – I was only asking, like.’ I immediately adopted a tone of total subservience and surrender.

  A few days later though, he got high and told me his system without me even asking. That’s the thing about cocaine – it doesn’t half make people talkative.

  Car manufacturers in that era had been making huge strides in automobile security. But, there were still cracks in the system. If you got hold of a car’s petrol cap, and had some very serious technological savvy, you could produce an exact replica of the ignition key. So Alec had teams of guys out stealing petrol caps all over northern England.

  He’d always leave it exactly three months between nicking the petrol cap and taking the car, so his system could never be traced. He even had a way to get hold of licence plates matching the make and model of each motor. That meant he either had a contact inside the DVLA, or his own high-end factory. Either would have been impressive. As he put it, ‘These are my cars. They might be parked on someone else’s drive for now, but they’re my fucking cars.’

  At any one time Alec was keeping track of up to 200 cars, all at various points in their three-month waiting period. Each week a new batch would become available. He never wrote anything down, just kept the numbers in his head with unfailingly exact detail. Alec was a genuinely brilliant mind, perhaps some sort of genius. I have no doubt that if he had gone into legit business he could have made millions.

  But, for all his intelligence, Alec was also a brutal, vicious gangster. He kept order the same way as every other mobster: through violence, fear and intimidation.

  He’d give one of his henchmen a nod, and some poor sod would be dragged out the back of the pub for a kicking. His conversation was shot through with references to having people ‘done’. Alec may have had good scams going with the cars and antiques, but as ever, the most profitable business was drugs. And that business only ever works one way.

  Every one of these beatings I witnessed was a direct reminder of what would happen if I let my character break for even a second, but all I could do was note every instance of violence, or mention of firearms, and log them as evidence.

  But, at the Lord Stanley, it was all just accepted as how the game worked. Often the victims would be back in the pub a few weeks later, still bruised, but having paid off whatever debt was owed.

  A few instances though, disturbed me profoundly.

  One of the local geezers had brought down his young girlfriend and a gaggle of her mates. They all got a bit drunk and flirty, and one very pretty brunette sidled up to Alec, batted her eyes and asked for some pills. Her charms must have worked some kind of magic, as Alec sorted them all out right there.

  One of her friends obviously reacted badly to the ephedrine in the pill, and went into a little panic attack, hyperventilating in the corner. The brunette completely lost it and rushed up to Alec shouting, ‘You’ve killed her, you’ve fucking killed her. I’ll get the fucking pigs down here!’

  Alec turned icy cold. ‘Oi Deano, make this cunt understand I’m not someone to be spoken to like that.’

  Deano sprang into action, grabbing the girl’s arm and dragging her through a door leading to the pub’s back room.

  This threw me into an instant crisis. I’d seen people dragged into that room before. But those were gangsters. There was obviously no way I could break character to help her, but my concept of ‘fighting the good fight’ didn’t include letting teenage girls get beaten by thugs. I was frozen on the spot, not knowing what to do.

  Thankfully the door swung open and Deano emerged, still with an iron grip on the girl’s upper arm. She appeared unhurt, but her face was white as ash. Whatever Deano had said, the message had got through.

  As much as I sighed with relief that she was all right, the cold ruthlessness with which Alec had delivered his order made my skin crawl. As charismatic and intelligent as this guy could be, I had to remember he was a genuinely dangerous criminal.

  And soon Alec’s sociopathic side was to impact me much more directly.

  I was sitting in the Stanley with Phil, quietly nursing a pint, when Alec burst in, obviously high and very excited about something. He rushed straight over.

  ‘I’ve got something for you, mate.’ He sat and waved to the bartender for a drink. ‘Here have a look at this—’

  He was cut off as another figure bounded up from across the room. ‘Alec, mate, Alec… I’ve got it, yeah – I’ve got the cash.’

  It was Will Skipton, a low-rent hustler and Stanley regular who everyone called Skips. Alec’s face twisted into an irate grimace at the interruption.

  ‘See, it’s all here – it’s just a tenner short,’ Skips babbled, holding out a handful of crumpled notes. ‘I’ll get that to you tomorrow – promise. Really mate, tomorrow.’

  Alec broke into a broad smile. ‘Mate, don’t worry, tomorrow is absolutely fine. Not a bother,’ he intoned with the exaggerated friendliness of an American politician.

  Skips visibly deflated in relief. ‘Ah Alec, you’re the best mate. Tomorrow, yeah – promise.’

  As Skips sat back down, Alec turned and made eye contact with Dom, another of his lieutenants. Alec gave the minutest flick of his head, and I watched as Dom stood up and walked over to where Skips was sitting with his back turned.

  The first blow caught him on the side of the face, the meaty crunch echoing around the pub.

  Skips went sprawling to the floor, and Dom went straight after him.

  Smack. Smack. Smack. Dom drove his fist again and again into Skips’ face, which exploded in a gush of blood. He didn’t even scream, just made a sort of croaky gurgle through his caved-in jaw. It was one of the most disturbing sounds I’ve ever heard. Without a word, Dom grabbed the back of Skips’ coat and dragged him out the door.

  At which point Alec turned back to me, all smiles as if nothing had happened, and picked up right where he had left off. ‘Yeah, as I was saying, I’ve got something for you.’

  He reached into his inside pocket and pulled out a plastic baggie.

  ‘You know how you were saying you like decent speed, but everything around here is shit… well I fucking guara
ntee you’ve never had anything like this before.’

  He chucked the baggie on the table with the self-satisfaction of the parent who knows they’ve got their kid just the right Christmas present.

  It was a toxic pink sludge that looked like it was actually starting to dissolve its way through the plastic wrapping. ‘Oh… uhh… yeah, thanks Alec, cheers,’ I stuttered, still trying to process the beating I had just witnessed.

  ‘Nah mate – go on, do a bit.’ Alec laughed, slapping me on the back. ‘I wanna see your reaction. This is proper good stuff man, I got it just for you.’

  What the fuck was I meant to do? I had built myself up as this big amphetamine connoisseur – it was an essential thread of my cover story. And here I was with a bag of what looked like Chernobyl waste in front of me, and a guy who had just had someone’s face smashed in telling me to take a dab. I locked eyes with Phil. No help there. He was as lost as I was.

  ‘Go on mate,’ cried Alec, pushing the bag towards me.

  There was nothing else for it. I picked up the bag, took a tiny bit of the pink goo on my finger and knocked it back with a slug of beer. The gag was instant. This stuff tasted like chemical warfare. It was all I could do not to throw up all over the table.

  ‘No no no – take a fucking proper hit mate. Go on – it’s on me.’ Alec was really enjoying this. He was genuinely proud of his product and wanted to see me enjoy it.

  I could already feel my heart starting to race. But what could I do? I’d just watched Alec have someone beaten over a ten-pound debt. There was no option. I took a massive lump of the stuff, and slammed it down.

  The effect was instant. An awful chemical heat rising up from my kidneys; an unbearable dryness of the eyeballs; my heart starting to pound in my ears like a pneumatic drill. I couldn’t seem to fill my lungs with air and I felt a band of sweat beading around my forehead.

  Alec burst into laughter as my face turned red. ‘Yeah, you love a bit of it, don’t you mate! Tell you what, give us £20 and you can have the rest of the bag.’