by Neil Woods
‘It’s Jimmy, he’s a mate,’ Stan replied for me.
Kyle sullenly stood aside and we filed past. His living room was a dusty mess, strewn with empty cans and drug paraphernalia, much like every other flat in town I’d seen. The only difference was that Kyle still had hot water and a TV. In Fenton, that was the line between user and dealer.
I handed over £30 in marked bills. The Staffordshire cops marked their notes by colouring in the Queen’s left eye with a biro, joking that it made her look like someone had given her a smack. Once again, just a few years later a technique this shockingly obvious would get you killed. But Kyle just stuffed them in his tracksuit pocket and handed over the gear.
I left it five days. Long enough that Kyle could assume I had finished my half-T, but recent enough that he’d still remember my face.
It was a miserable grey afternoon as I trudged up to his door through the Staffordshire rain. I knocked, and waited as it creaked open.
‘Uh mate… Hi… I was wondering if I could get another half-T off you.’
The door flew open and Kyle sprang forward, pinning me against the wall. There was a flash of silver and I felt cold metal on my skin. He was holding a sword to my throat.
‘You’re fucking DS, you cunt. You’re fucking Drugs Squad. I know what the fuck you are,’ he hissed into my face.
I froze.
Keeping my head absolutely still, I flicked my eyes from the blade to Kyle’s face, then to his hallway, where I could just make out his girlfriend standing and watching.
‘Uh… no mate… ’ was all I could manage. I tried to project total humility, subservience and abasement.
Kyle leaned even closer, locking eyes with me. I could feel his breath on my face. For one moment the entire universe shrank to the razor edge of the curved samurai-style blade.
Then I felt the metal come away from my neck.
He turned and walked down the hall. As he passed, the girlfriend piped up, ‘Christ – I thought he was gonna say he was fuckin’ DS for a minute there.’ They both gave abrasive laughs, very much at my expense. I kept my head down and followed Kyle into the living room.
‘So, what you want?’ asked Kyle, now more bored than aggressive.
‘Well mate, I was wondering if I could get another half-T, like the other week?’
‘I haven’t got anywhere near that weight – what the fuck are you playing at?’ All the threat and malice flooded back into his tone. My heart jumped and I instinctively glanced towards at the sword, now lying propped in a corner.
Then he continued. ‘I can do you four bags, but I don’t have a half-T chopped out.’
Now it made sense. He just wanted to sell me four bags for £40, rather than a half-T for £30. Same amount of gear – more money for him.
I handed over the cash, grabbed the four little foil twists, and left the house thankful that I’d never have to go back there again.
A few feet away from Kyle’s gate I paused to stash the wraps in my cigarette pack. Then I felt something pressing into my chest. I looked down. There was a large hunting knife hovering at my solar plexus.
‘Gie’us the gear,’ demanded a strong Stoke accent. ‘Gie’us it fucking now.’
I was being robbed.
This is a standard of the drugs game – one junkie watches another leave a dealer’s house, then mugs him for his score on the way out.
But I wasn’t having this. Not after the afternoon I’d had. This smack was my evidence. If I lost it, it meant having to score off Kyle again and go another round with his samurai sword. I just wasn’t doing it.
‘Fucking gie’us the gear now!’ shouted the robber.
I backed away slowly. The guy looked at me in confusion – he hadn’t expected this.
‘Fucking gie’us the gear,’ he tried again. I kept backing up, keeping my eye fixed on the serrated blade.
Then, with three feet between us, I ran.
He may have had the knife, but if there’s one thing I was fairly sure of it was that I could outrun a heroin addict. He tried to keep up for about half a block, but I wasn’t taking any chances. I sprinted off and didn’t stop till he was a dot on the horizon.
Of course, when I got back to HQ, the response was, ‘Hmmm, yeah probably shouldn’t write it up like that, yeah.’ They didn’t have to say it. By now I knew how things worked.
Kyle liked to flash that sword around, though. On the day of the bust, our observation team spotted him carrying the weapon as he moved between his safe houses.
So, we had to have an emergency tactical briefing to decide whether a fully armed response team was necessary. My opinion was that whenever possible we should avoid bringing guns onto the street, and in the end it was decided that fifteen hard Staffordshire cops could get the job done – sword or no sword.
That afternoon I did one more buy with marked money, then the team went banging in. Along with his blade, Kyle was holding three ounces of heroin. He got five and a half years.
After my disappointment with the outcome of the Whitwick case, this success did something to reaffirm my faith in the system. Kyle needed to be taken off the streets, and we had all worked hard to get the job done well.
I got another commendation, but for years afterwards there were moments when I could still feel the edge of that sword pressing against my throat. It could be a stressful moment at work, or arguing with Sam in our own kitchen, but suddenly there it would be, a phantom blade just at the base of my neck.
The next time Jim Horner sauntered over to my desk, it was regarding a very different kind of deployment.
‘All right Woodsy, you’ve been doing so well that the bosses are starting a nationwide training course. Fancy coming along to help teach it?’
I was a bit taken aback. I knew I had got some decent results, and I was aware that other undercover operations were beginning to be deployed around the country, but I had no special training. I had always just gone on instinct. I had no idea how I would even start teaching this to other recruits.
‘Come on Woodsy, it’ll be a laugh. Some Level 1’s will be there. It’ll be good for you to get to know the big fish.’ Jim slapped me on the back, taking my agreement as a given.
Undercover work in British policing is divided into two sections: Level 1 and Level 2. The Level 1 operatives are the guys you see in films. They perform deep infiltration on ultra high-level criminal organisations. They receive massive logistical support, with forged documents at the ready to corroborate their cover identities, and the most state-of-the-art espionage equipment available. These guys will spend months working in an area, just so their faces have been seen and their backstory carries more weight.
Then there are the Level 2 guys. Guys who are dropped on a corner and told to go and buy some crack. Guys like me.
Level 1 work had been well established for decades, with a centralised training programme in London. Level 2-style work was only just emerging as a practice, based on operations by myself and a few others around the country.
Now that we had done well as their guinea pigs, the bosses were rolling out Level 2 training on a regional basis across Britain. So, Jim and I signed out a squad car and drove to a massive police station in Wakefield to spend a few weeks imparting what knowledge we could.
It was incredible. The Level 1 guys brought a depth of knowledge and experience that I had never encountered before. They were experts in conducting strategic, intelligence-led operations, targeting only the most senior criminals. Each one had astonishing stories of bringing down major international crime gangs.
I spent as much time learning as I did teaching. They ran intensive courses on the legal issues of undercover work, picking apart the exact limits of what constituted admissible evidence and ethical action.
But, the Level 1s had spent so much time among the high-end dons and godfathers that they actually didn’t know much about the dirty streetcraft of chasing crackheads and amphetamine-addled council estate thugs. That’s where
I came in.
‘Yeah, but how do you, y’know… actually cook a heroin shot?’
I found myself grabbing a sample from the confiscated drugs locker, a needle from the infirmary and a spoon from the canteen, then demonstrating to a rapt audience how to mix the powder with citric acid on the spoon, cook it to a sizzling goo, then suck it through a cigarette filter into the needle.
‘Yeah, but what if you’re there, and you actually need to shoot it up?’ one of the recruits challenged.
‘Well look – going undercover is about improvising… find somewhere soft, like a couch or a car seat, then pull down your pants like you’re shooting into the femoral vein in your groin. You’ll probably be able to block their view long enough to shoot it straight into the cushion you’re sitting on.’
Without even realising it, I seemed to have picked up a wealth of knowledge and streetcraft. I ended up giving long seminars, to both wide-eyed recruits and super-experienced Level 1s, in the complex codes and etiquettes of junkies and street dealers.
Occasionally I’d glance up and catch Jim Horner watching me with a proud, almost paternal eye. I had to give him credit. He had recognised how far I’d come, even when I hadn’t.
The Level 1s and I worked together to develop a programme to test our recruits’ observation skills and ability to stay cool under pressure.
We’d send some newbie to confront a more experienced officer, with no instructions other than to ‘try and make a deal’. They’d get halfway through their first sentence, then the ‘target’ would start shouting and getting in their face. The newbie might be able to handle the screaming, but when they emerged from the room we’d ask them how many packs of cigarettes had been sitting on the desk.
You’d be amazed what people can miss. The ability to keep your eyes open under pressure takes real mental discipline. It got to the point where we would leave a decommissioned pistol on a table, and some students would come back reporting their target was unarmed.
We also tested our recruits’ ‘bullshitting skills’. How good were they at developing and maintaining a cover story? Could they improvise and adapt in the heat of the moment?
It’s harder than you think. Everyone rushes it. It’s amazing how many people walk in and immediately go, ‘Hi, I’m Jim from Birmingham, I deal the odd bit of smack here and there.’
This is exactly wrong. Real criminals keep their mouths shut. The rule is to only give information when it is extracted from you. The best cover story is the one you never use. Any of our students who couldn’t check their human urge to give away their story failed the course very quickly.
It was an uncanny feeling watching these students systematically learn all this stuff that I had just made up as I went along. But it was fascinating to see how some recruits seemed to have a natural instinct for these skills, and some very much did not. I never worked out what the thing is, but some people have it and some just don’t.
The best part, though, was hanging out with the Level 1 guys at the bar after the day’s teaching was done. One in particular, Steve, became a good friend, and we spent long hours chatting as he slammed back glass after glass of Talisker whisky.
Steve had been an undercover operative for over thirteen years, and had been personally responsible for taking down some extremely significant international criminal networks. Obviously, he was a tough guy – one couldn’t do that job otherwise – but there was absolutely no macho posturing, no showing off, no arrogance.
One evening we were talking about a year-long investigation he had done, infiltrating a cartel shipping drugs between Holland and Britain. I was wondering how he kept his head, staying in character for that kind of prolonged deployment. Steve looked at me and said, ‘The thing is, Neil, with undercover work you’re never playing a role. You’re only ever a slightly different version of yourself.’
That was it. In one sentence Steve had encapsulated everything I had been struggling with in trying to understand the work I did. I paused for a moment to process this.
‘Fucking hell man, I don’t know how you do it. Keeping that focus for months on end? I don’t know if I’d have it in me.’
‘You’re joking aren’t you?’ Steve laughed. ‘You’re the one doing the crazy shit. I wouldn’t do what you Level 2 lot do in a million years.’
‘What do you mean?’ I was genuinely perplexed. Steve was a Level 1. He spent years in deep cover chasing down top-level criminals. To me he was basically a cross between Batman and God.
‘Neil, the people I deal with are civilised, they’re predictable – they wear fucking suits. The guys you’re chasing are lunatics – they’re fucking drug-addled maniacs. They’re actually stupid enough to think that killing you might be a good tactic.’
Steve paused and took a sip of his whisky before continuing.
‘When I take on a case I have more backup than James Bond – yeah, it’s dangerous, but I always know there are systems in place if things go wrong. What you do? Just rocking up, scoring some gear and working your way in with some crackhead in a tracksuit – not a chance mate, too wild for me.’
I sipped my beer reflectively. Steve had just spun all my prejudices on their head. And I have to admit that having a guy like Steve say that he admired my work made me feel a little surge of pride. I had never actually thought of myself as courageous before. I knew my work was dangerous, but it was just what I did.
But Steve was right. I hadn’t even yet scratched the surface of just how vicious and unpredictable the street-level War on Drugs could become.
CHAPTER 9
NEW MILLS
IN 1999 I was transferred to the New Mills station for my uniformed police work. This was a whole new form of culture shock.
The uniformed Inspector at New Mills was a stern, humourless company man named Andrew McAllister, who starched his shirt and wore his moustache primly waxed like a First World War pilot. McAllister liked order and discipline. There wasn’t an atom of the maverick daring of Jim Horner and the Drugs Squad.
But his problem with me began at the theatre.
I had only been at New Mills for a couple of weeks, and on a night off I booked tickets to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company do their The Bible: The Complete Word of God (Abridged). The show was a silly, Monty Python-esque riff on the Bible story, and a big hit at the time. At the interval I went to grab a drink at the bar, and whom should I see but McAllister.
I walked straight up. ‘Hello sir, didn’t expect to see you here. You enjoying the show?’
‘Not really,’ he barked, giving me a withering look then grumpily stalking off. I thought this was a bit of an unfriendly response, but didn’t pay it too much mind as I went in for the second act.
After the performance, however, we were confronted outside the theatre by a loud group of evangelical Christians protesting the production’s supposed blasphemy. Right at the front was McAllister, bellowing about the sin of taking the word of God in vain. I managed to avoid him, but grabbed a leaflet to try and work out what all the fuss was about.
It turned out McAllister was a hardcore fundamentalist Christian who had previously taken a year off the force to do missionary work in Africa. From that night on he decided he didn’t like me.
It started with spot inspections of my locker. He was perfectly entitled to do these, but it escalated to the point of absurdity. My locker was getting turned over a couple of times a week. McAllister would find some file of surveillance photos and brandish them as if he’d uncovered a grand conspiracy. Of course I’d always explain that they were just part of an investigation, but it didn’t stop him hounding me.
McAllister was a chain of command fetishist. He couldn’t stand that I would get calls, and have to disappear without telling him where. For him, police work was about maintaining a neat shift rota and hitting the criminals hard. He found the entire concept of covert operations sneaky and deceitful. Much better to just knock heads together and make sure your uniform was freshly pressed in
the morning.
McAllister found every obscure disciplinary loophole he could to cause trouble and block my career. I think these days his vendetta would probably fall into the category of ‘workplace bullying’. But this was a different era – and I was a cop. On the force you’re taught to just get on with it, so that’s what I did.
Eventually though, the harassment had a positive outcome. Ever since joining the force I had wanted to join CID. I always knew my talents lay in those kinds of strategic, intelligence-led investigations. Now, with McAllister on my back, I finally put myself forward, just to get out from under him.
In the meantime, there were always the undercover operations to keep me out of the office. There was nothing McAllister could do to stop me, and I went back to doing what I did best.
Throughout the 1980s police forces across Britain had fought a running battle against the blight of football hooliganism. As distant a memory as it now seems, for decades this was Britain’s national embarrassment, sending thousands to hospital and tearing communities apart.
As much as the police like to take the credit, what really ended the hooligan era was the rise of acid house in the early 90s. The generation of kids who might have grown up to take over the football ‘firms’ discovered they could have a much better time getting loved up and dancing in a field. West Ham fans went to the same raves as Millwall fans, and everyone ended up in the same MDMA-fuelled euphoric mess. Getting your head kicked in on a rainy football terrace just couldn’t compete.
This meant that by 1999, the only people left on the hooligan scene were the most incurable monomaniac psychopaths. These were the guys who didn’t get their kicks through dancing, drugs, or even girls. What they enjoyed was battering people.
In Derby one of the worst of this crew was a guy named Kevin. He was a main-man in the Derby Lunatic Fringe, the notorious local firm that would still arrange brawls with the Burnley Suicide Squad, Nottingham Forest Executive Crew or anyone else who wanted a go.
When football grounds began searching for knives, this lot started sneaking in sharpened coins and apples stuffed with razor blades to hurl at the opposing side. Their particular trademark, though, was to attach an extra blade to a Stanley knife, so that when they cut someone the two gashes would be too close together to stitch properly, and the scar would end up as a grotesque spiderweb covering half their victim’s face.
