by Neil Woods
All things considered, it was probably the worst place he could have chosen. The mid to late 90s were a heroin boom-time in London, with Russian and Turkish mobs using the opening of the Eastern Bloc to rush in and flood the capitals of Europe with Afghan brown.
Within months Ali had fallen into debt to a nasty gang, and tried to work off what he owed as a mule and runner. But he wasn’t any kind of career criminal, and didn’t know the tricks of the trade. Before long he was busted holding £2,000 worth of smack.
The police offered Ali every opportunity to walk away from serious prison time in exchange for grassing up his criminal bosses. He didn’t take any deal. He kept his mouth shut and did his three years like a soldier.
The moment he was released, he was scooped up by his old OCG. He assumed that having kept his silence, and done a stretch inside to protect them, they would help him find his feet on the outside.
No such luck.
The OCG explained to Ali that not only did he owe them for the £2,000 of heroin he’d been busted with, but the time inside counted as interest. The total was now £4,000.
When they realised that Ali really was penniless and couldn’t pay, they took him to an old warehouse, tied him to a chair and poured acid over his knees.
Ali described how they’d stood in a semicircle watching him writhe as the acid burned its way through his kneecaps and tendons. Eventually they drove off, untying one of his hands so he could call an ambulance. But they made sure they waited long enough that he would never walk properly again.
That’s how Ali ended up on his crutches. Even through the fug and glow of his opiate nod, I could see the pain flickering just below the surface as he spoke.
My mind immediately flashed back to my realisation on the sofa a few nights before. Once again, here was the arms race dynamic of the War on Drugs playing out. A few years earlier Ali would have been right to assume that keeping quiet would have earned him loyalty from his dealers. But the inexorable logic of the drugs war only leads one way: the police get smarter, so the criminals get nastier. Things can only ever go from bad to worse, from savagery to savagery.
Of course there was always the suspicion that Ali might be tweaking his story to gain sympathy. But working undercover you learn to spot when someone is bending the truth, and I believed Ali was telling it straight. His voice started to crack and falter as he told me how he had tried to return to Scotland but had only got as far as Leicester, where he was now stuck.
‘When I first got here – when I was at my lowest… before I found the Big Issue… I had nothing. I was rattling for a fix so bad that I snatched a woman’s handbag. I–I–I tried to just grab it and run but I was on my crutches… I was trying to limp away, but she ran after me and started hitting me, so I just threw the bag at her and went as fast as I could.’
Ali paused before continuing, ‘I never thought when I was a kid that I’d be the one who ended up snatching women’s bags on the street… That was never meant to be me.’
This was devastating. Ali was so obviously a decent guy – a good soul trapped in a system that wouldn’t offer the help he needed. Instead, he was injecting street heroin in a squat in Leicester, getting used by me for introductions to drug dealers.
I often think back to Ali. Over the months I knew him I was amazed at the way he chatted to people to make his Big Issue sales. It still depresses and enrages me that this guy, who had such brains, charm and sensitivity, ended up in the situation he did. If he had just been given a bit of support, instead of being turned into a criminal, there is no telling what a person like that might have achieved.
I left Ali’s squat that day shaken, rubbing my temples and wondering how to find any sense or logic in what I was doing.
But I was still in Leicester with a job to do. I told myself it was exactly the people who had burned Ali’s knees that I was trying to bring to justice. And over the next few months, Ali became an invaluable resource as I began to penetrate the criminal gangs that ran Highfields.
One of the perks of the new EMSOU long-deployment system was that I usually got the weekends off, so I was able to spend more time with the kids.
As a family, we entered a phase of relative calm and I almost began to feel like we were getting back on track. It had been so long since I had felt safe and confident at home that I was almost shocked at how unfamiliar these feelings had become. But, encouraged by this new sense of security, I decided to try and sort myself out and get healthy.
I had been smoking cigarettes since early on in my undercover career. It was too good a prop for the job not to use. But now I was sick of it. I had a hacking cough and I hated being so reliant on this psychological crutch.
So, I quit. I threw away my last pack, suffered for a week, but willed myself through.
It was a pleasant surprise that I was able to stick to the decision, so I decided to see if I could improve my whole lifestyle. In my work I was constantly surrounded by addiction, toxicity and physical degradation. Few things focus the mind on one’s health quite like a hepatitis-infected heroin addict offering you his needle to share.
So, I started running. The first day out I got about half a mile before collapsing in a phlegmy, spluttering heap, but I persisted, and it turns out that one actually does improve quickly with regular training. Before long I was going out for several miles at a stretch. One of Sam’s friends from her teacher training course had a boyfriend who was into fell-running. He heard I was trying to get fit and invited me out onto the fells with him.
Within minutes of hitting the hills for the first time I knew I had found my new personal addiction. There was something about being able to disappear into the mountains that just hooked me. Off-road running demands a constant awareness of potential obstacles and changes in terrain; the steep climbs pushed the body and mind to their absolute limits. This was not only an escape from the feral underworld I worked in, but also from the situation at home. I could come back for the weekend, take the kids swimming in the morning, then head into the mountains to be on my own and run off the stress of the week.
This new feeling of strength and fitness was hugely liberating and empowering. But there was a catch. I began to get the sense that Sam didn’t appreciate my newfound enthusiasm for healthy living. I started to notice how her expression would change as I laced up my shoes for a run. Things really went downhill when I tried to complement the exercise by cooking us healthier food. It seemed that every time I went out of my way to pick up really good ingredients or experiment with a new recipe the tension between us would return.
Sometimes I almost had to laugh – this all seemed like the exact reversal of every cliché of the grumpy husband berating his wife for not having his tea ready just how he liked it when he got home. But any possible humour in the situation evaporated very quickly. Once again we spiralled into a period of stress and hostility and it felt like our marriage was falling apart all over again.
A simple disagreement over a plate of pasta would find me once again at 6 a.m. splashing water on my face and staring at myself in the bathroom mirror as I once again prepared to go back out and face the Leicester gangs.
It was only once I was behind the wheel, heading back out to the streets that I felt the weight begin to slip away. When I was heading towards the job I could feel a sense of purpose, a sense of fighting for something meaningful and important.
I had been making progress. Carefully establishing trust with Ali over several weeks, I had slowly managed to make contact with a number of dealers, and eventually to start buying directly from them on my own. I was beginning to piece together an idea of how the gangs in the area were structured.
As the weeks turned into months it became all too easy to lose track of time. Addicts don’t differentiate between days; their only measure of time is from one score to the next. I began to slip into what I called ‘junkie time’, each day blending into the next in a seemingly unending round of tense scores, grimy squats and furtive evidenc
e drops.
But then, one evening at our HQ, I remember looking around and being amazed at the amount of information I had gathered. With EMSOU our operations had become much more slick and professional. There were huge whiteboards plastered with individual target photos, connected by coloured bits of string in a tangled web. It was like an FBI staging post in some Hollywood movie, if Hollywood detectives paused every twenty minutes to brew cups of Yorkshire Tea.
EMSOU streamlined and codified every aspect of the investigation. We were all handed official new evidence books to replace the haphazard note-taking of the old days. Setting down my every interaction on the street, recording the serial numbers of every banknote I used, and all the rest, was a slow and painstaking process.
The most genuinely irritating part of the new procedures was that printed on the first two pages of our EMSOU evidence books were the new rules of engagement for undercover officers. ‘You will not wilfully endanger yourself or fellow officers; You will not act as an agent provocateur, etc’. Our commanding officer had to read these rules aloud to us before every single deployment; every day I had to listen to Carl or Raj drone through the procedure, despite the fact that I could recite every clause by heart. But with EMSOU, rules were rules.
But despite its kinks, the new system was paying off. We had gathered a genuinely impressive amount of info and intelligence on the Leicester drugs scene.
There were two competing, but somewhat interconnected mobs that seemed to rule the chaotic world of the Highfields estates. The first was a gang of Montserratians – definitely some of the strangest gangsters I ever encountered.
When the Montserrat volcano obliterated almost half the island in 1995, the UK, as the former colonial power, ended up taking in several thousand refugees. Many ended up in Highfields. A few were plugged into international drug smuggling in the Caribbean, and quickly realised the vast earning potential of their connections on the streets of Britain.
I was under no illusion: these were ruthless, exploitative, brutal criminals who ruled the estates through intimidation and violence. But they were also lively, charismatic and very charming. The gang spent most days sitting around one of the new council-built playgrounds, singing along to a guitar that they passed around, and all seemed able to play very well. It was extremely disconcerting. One minute they’d be singing this upbeat samba-influenced music, then in an instant the mood would change and they would viciously lash out. Music aside, the estates lived in terror of this gang and their reprisals.
The Montserratian patois was also outlandishly unique. They called heroin ‘boom ting’, but pronounced it ‘boom tang’. So, heroin was boom tang, and crack was zing tang. After spending months cosying up to these guys, getting to know each member of the gang, I even started using that slang in police briefings, and got some very odd looks from the brass.
The rival mob was a more traditional local black British set-up, running crack and heroin into the estates, along with guns, gambling and protection rackets.
This lot were truly malignant. And they were shockingly young. Most drug gangs use young teenagers as messengers and runners, but with these guys some of the soldiers themselves were barely out of school. One of the ringleaders went by the street name JB. He couldn’t have been much older than seventeen or eighteen, but there was already a deep, hardened violence in him.
Every time I managed to score off JB he would eyeball me in the nastiest, most unnecessarily threatening way, sometimes giving me a shove or slap, just to let me know who was the boss and who the low-down junkie.
I made good headway into both gangs, making buys, establishing familiarity and identifying the main dealers in each crew. More and more photos started going up on the EMSOU whiteboards. From tracing the serial numbers of the banknotes I painstakingly copied into my evidence book, we knew there was some level of trade between these gangs. But from our lab reports we worked out that they must be hooked into different drug-supply chains.
The next step was to get past the street-level dealers and discover where they were getting their product. But these crews were guarded. They had cottoned on to police tactics, and were ultra-careful not to let anyone they didn’t absolutely trust get a glimpse higher up the food chain. It was the arms race at work.
So, I decided to strengthen my cover by bringing in Cate as a girlfriend character. Even the most ruthless criminals will read a human element into someone’s relationship, a bit of personal drama they can relate to. If you can chat to them about trouble with your girl, they start seeing you as a human being rather than just another junkie.
Also, women are much less likely to be searched for recording equipment. Many gangsters have a latent chauvinism, assuming that a woman couldn’t possibly be a real threat. We could use this to our advantage.
We turned ourselves into just another junkie couple trapped in a classic, mutually destructive addict relationship that neither one of us could leave. This is something every dealer has seen countless times, and it immediately established familiarity. Cate played the role perfectly, developing a wonderful twitchy eye, and erratic movements that perfectly captured the spasmodic, chicken-like motions of the smack and crack addict with a shot nervous system. Several weeks in, we were starting to build a rapport with the Montserratians. But we still needed something extra to win their trust.
Cate had the brainwave. We would stage me getting arrested. If a bunch of gangsters see you getting roughly bundled into a police van, not only do they not believe you could ever be a copper yourself, but it might even establish some empathy. It’s something every dealer has gone through at some point.
So, on the appointed day Cate and I made our score in one of the playgrounds the Montserratians had taken over. Then, just as we had got far enough away that the gang wouldn’t have to run, but close enough that they could definitely still see us, a police van screeched up. Out jumped four uniformed coppers from our squad. I was shoved roughly to the ground, then slammed up against the wall. The officers made a great show of finding the wrap of skag in my shoe and slapping on the handcuffs.
This is where Cate’s talent for drama kicked in. Perfectly playing the part of the distraught junkie moll, she started wailing and screaming at the police officers.
‘Just leave ’im alone. That’s my man, you fuckin’ bastards.’
I was totally flabbergasted. She was properly going for it, in floods of tears, with a real desperate screech in her voice. I already knew Cate was a good undercover, but this was Oscar-winning material.
‘I love you Zack. I fucking love you,’ she wailed as if this were a particularly dramatic moment on EastEnders.
Then she did something really unexpected. Pushing through the uniformed cops, she grabbed me and started snogging me right there.
Now, this was quite strange. Here I was wearing handcuffs, getting passionately kissed by a beautiful woman. I guess even busting crack dealers has its perks. The other cops, though, were completely agog, just watching as their two colleagues made out in front of the van. Eventually I had to give one of them a subtle kick – come on, bloody arrest me, then.
The arrest gambit worked like a charm. I left it about three days, then shuffled back to the playground, acting as sheepish and dejected as possible. The Montserratian guys even asked how things had gone with the cops, and showed some sympathy when I told them I’d been bailed, but had to check into the police station every two weeks.
It was about ten days later that I caught the big break.
I was dropped off at the usual point about a thirty-minute walk out of Highfields. That solitary walk in was always the time I used to clear my head and really become my down-and-out, vulnerable addict persona.
I wandered into the playground, but instead of the usual crowd there was just one guy, Jacko, slouching on a bench with a sullen expression.
‘All right Jacko,’ I said, sidling up, ‘you got the whites?’
‘Nah Zack,’ he sighed back, ‘ain’t got nuttin�
� on me, man.’
Then he paused for a second, looking me up and down. I did my best to look as pathetic and unthreatening as possible, and for a split-second I almost thought I could see a grain of pity in his gaze. For that one moment, maybe I became a human being desperate for help, rather than just another grasping junkie rattling for a fix.
‘Come on man – me tek you upstairs n’ we get de zing tang. We go to Darren.’
This was it. My weeks of painstaking trust-building were paying off. I was finally clawing myself above the street and moving up the food chain.
Jacko led me out of the playground, down two streets and into the entrance of a run-down high-rise. I followed, ignoring the flickering of the broken strip-lights and the ammonia stink of urine as he buzzed the lift.
As we ascended, I saw Jacko’s foot start to tap compulsively. His hands began to clench and unclench and he looked around nervously. Something was up.
He turned to me and started to say something, but then stopped and looked away. He tried again.
‘You are all right, yeah?’ he stuttered.
I realised in an instant what was going on. He was taking me up to see a high-ranking gangster, and had just started panicking that he didn’t really know who I was.
‘What d’you mean mate, I’m fine.’ I assumed a tone of slight mystification.
‘Yeah… all right. So, you’re… you’re good, yeah?’
The poor guy was really sweating it. I could see his mind turning somersaults as he raced through all our previous interactions, searching for evidence that I was anything other than a poor, but generally good-natured smack and crack addict. I almost felt bad for old Jacko; he was in a terrible position. But my overriding concern was making sure he didn’t panic and back out of our mission.
