59 Minutes

by Gordon Brown

  Being gay back then still wasn’t acceptable but Graham had a wife for show and nobody messed with Graham and Helmut. If they did, they didn’t do it twice.

  He worked out of an old mill in Silvertown and lived in the west end. He started work at six in the morning and was rarely home before midnight. I could see the writing on the wall even if my co-workers were blind. This boy was aiming for the top but neither Giles nor the old man seemed bothered. So I decided to go head to head and take him out.

  I remember the night we went in. Dark as a fat man’s sphincter. The cloud cover was full and the moon new. The lighting in Silvertown was poor. The lateness of the hour was accompanied by a mist that drifted off the river and settled like a wet blanket on the roads.

  There were twenty one of us. All armed and all fully aware of what we were getting into.

  The operation was simple. The same old story — cut off the head of the monster and let the rest die. We concentrated everything on getting into Graham’s office and hitting him hard.

  At first things went well. The darkness was good cover and the mist deadened any noise we made. The entrance to the industrial estate was unguarded and Stern’s office light blazed like a beacon from the third floor of the old mill. There were two guards at the entrance but they looked bored and were swigging liberally from a hip flask. By the time we landed on them they were too drunk to respond and we were in.

  I hung back letting Spencer take point. We flooded up the stairs and into the office and hit trouble.

  Our scout had told us there were three or four in the building but when we opened the door I counted five times that number. We had the element of surprise but not for long and instead of a quick in and out we ended up in a fire-fight while Stern fled.

  I ordered Spencer and two others to follow me to chase down Stern. We left the team to slug it out and flew down the stairs to the sound of retreating gunfire. We caught the taillights of a BMW as it fishtailed out of the complex. Running for our car we gave chase but, in the mist, it was a hopeless cause and we lost them.

  We cruised for an hour before heading back to Stern’s office. The fire-fight was over and we had control but without Stern it was a hollow victory. We leaned on his team but they were either too scared to talk or didn’t know where he was. I needed to finish this and finish it with pace.

  Spencer piped up and suggested we try his home. It was a long shot but if he was going to go to ground he might try and fly by his house first. It was worth a shot.

  I knew where he lived and, leaving my crew to clean up, we put metal to metal and screamed through a fog bound London.

  Stern lived in a mews in the west end and by the time we got there the fog was taking on the grey of dawn. We stopped at the end of his road and I saw Stern’s car, engine running and door open, sitting at the far end.

  He emerged with a briefcase in one hand, a screaming woman dragging her heels in the other. She was dressed for bed and it was clear that the current Mrs Stern wasn’t a happy bunny. I signalled for the others to follow me in.

  I didn’t care if he got in the car as there was only one way out and we had enough firepower to bring down a Panzer tank.

  He saw us when we were two doors from his house, leapt into the car and gunned the engine. Without closing the car door he slammed the car into reverse, and aimed for the middle of the road.

  Spencer pulled out his gun and let loose. The rear window shattered, the car slewed to one side and smashed into the front door of the house nearest to us. We waited for Stern to emerge but, apart from the engine racing in neutral, and exhaust pouring into the night there was no other action.

  Spencer walked up to the car door with his gun beaded on where Stern would exit. He reached the car and looked in. He turned round to look at me and drew his hand across his throat. It was all I needed to know and we left as Mrs Stern bore down on the car in hysterics.

  The next morning I received a call from Giles. He was verging on apoplectic as he screamed down the phone. I let him rant and then hung up. Ten minutes later the boss phoned and asked what the hell was going on. I told him what had happened and why. He asked me to wait by the phone.

  Half an hour later a car turned up outside the office and one of the boss’s bears hustled me into the back seat. We headed north to a small hotel in the village of Pangbourne on Thames. I was shown to a room at the back of the hotel and told to wait.

  Ten minutes rolled by before the boss walked in.

  With two bears in tow, he walked up to me and, knuckleduster in hand, cracked open my chin. I went down like a lump of clay and the bears played football with me for five minutes.

  ‘Stop,’ came the boss’s voice.

  The football stopped and I was dragged back onto a chair.

  ‘Giles is out. You are in. The whole of London is yours but pull another trick like that without my permission and you’ll join Karl Marx up at Highgate Cemetery.’

  With this he left and, with three busted ribs, a snapped wrist and a busted jaw I took a taxi back to London — stopping off at Gerry the Fix’s gaff for some emergency medical repairs.

  How’s the clock? Eleven thirty nine and four seconds.

  So there I was kingpin in London. Top of the tree and not yet thirty. I took to the new job with a ruthless streak that earned me the nickname ‘the bastard’. Unoriginal but accurate.

  I was now earning more in a week than some of my old school friends would earn in a year. I kept Spencer as my number two, split London into five areas — north, south, east, west and the city — and put a body in place for each. I drove the organisation hard and turned it from an opportunistic, street-fighting mob into a sophisticated business. We embraced technology and the financial markets and turned from petty loan sharking to money, drugs and sex.

  I lost four of my best men in early 1991 to a hit and run by a gang who came up from the south west with ambitions to knock me over. We repaid the favour by wiping out the entire gang. Most people will have heard of it. We crashed a turboprop with thirty people on board as it took off from Bristol airport. Sabotage was suspected but never proven.

  In the summer of 1993 a money laundering scheme that had doubled our income in the previous six months went tits up in a bad way. The financial authorities sent in the heavy mob and they were the Andrews Liver Salts to our digestion. I lost six of my best men to Wormwood Scrubs for sentences ranging from three to eight years. I escaped by the skin of my teeth but my card was marked.

  By now the police were wise to us in a big way but I was careful to give them little reason to talk to me. London was now over three quarters of the total income of the group and I was pushing to take control of the rest of England. I reckoned we could triple our income if I had the steering wheel.

  Of course you can see what’s coming. Sadly so could the boss. I was no longer a valued asset. I was becoming a serious risk to his command.

  One sunny Tuesday a blue Ford Escort parked outside my townhouse in Chelsea at five in the morning and, as I left the front door two hours later, it exploded — taking out half a block of London ’s most expensive real estate.

  I should have died but, as I left the house, I bent down to tie a shoe lace. The initial blast wave caught me in the backside and threw me into the basement well that sat beneath my front door. Out of the way of the main explosion I survived but was rendered deaf in one ear and suffered second degree burns to a fifth of my body. I had more cuts and bruises than could be counted and my Rolex was branded into my wrist. To this day I still carry the imprint of a watch on my skin.

  I spent three months in hospital, all the time fearing that the boss would finish the job. But he had gotten sloppy in his old age and word was everywhere that he was behind the failed attempt on my life. He went to ground. I might have been known as ‘the bastard’ but at least I was a fair bastard and rule number one in our game is don’t shit on your own doorstep.

  Two days before I left hospital a young man called Greg McAllis
ter took a walk in Hyde Park with his pet Labrador. It was a routine he had been repeating for a fortnight and, as he had done for the previous fourteen mornings, he uttered a polite good morning to an old man in a jogging suit flanked by two human four by twos. Only this time he took a small pistol from his coat and emptied the gun into the old man before running off.

  I was now in charge of the UK and had no intention of stopping there.

  Chapter 19

  Sometime after I left hospital I was given a copy of Little Caesar starring Edward G Robinson to watch while I was laid up. Robinson plays Riko, probably one of the best known gangsters in movie history. I loved the movie. No — I adored the movie. Robinson became a bit of a role model. He took no shit.

  There is a scene where he suspects that one of his gang is feeling guilty and about to go to confess all to the priest. Riko’s solution was to gun the gang member down on the steps of the church. I must have watched that movie a hundred times and I made it clear that I no longer wanted to be known as the bastard or Jock — and soon I was the new Riko.

  People thought I was off my head but I loved it.

  I had just entered my fourth decade and was one of the main players in my game. Life was sweet and I set about making myself comfortable. I called Martin down from Glasgow and put him and Spencer on the day to day stuff.

  I thought Martin might object. After all he had happily grown roots in Glasgow and, apart from the odd phone call, he had been a stranger. He surprised me by jumping on a train and joining me.

  I muscled up with bodyguards that were smart enough to know how to defend me and thick enough to do it regardless of the danger to themselves. I bought a pile in the country and adopted the landed gentry motif with consummate ease. Shotguns, wellies, hounds and a Land Rover Defender — I was lord of the manor — in true Only Fools and Horses style. I probably looked like a tit but I didn’t care — the money was rolling in and I was well smart enough to keep things on an even keel. At least I thought I was.

  Eleven forty eight and twenty seven seconds — time flies when you’re telling a good story.

  For five years I made hay and rolled in the folding stuff for fun. I had the sense to stay out of Ireland but Wales and Scotland were mine. The north east of England held out for a while but a face to face (by face to face I mean fifty odd on each side) in South Shields and we sorted it out.

  I know I wasn’t the only criminal in the country. I was one of thousands but I was nearer the top of the tree than rolling in the manure at the base of the trunk.

  A year later Carl Dupree rolled up at my manor. He stood on my lawn, took out a spray can and wrote in six feet letters, bright red six feet letters:: ‘The End.’

  That’s when things got weird and I mean plenty weird.

  Chapter 20

  The sun rose on the red lettering on my lawn as three gardeners cut out the turf and replaced it with less offensive grass. Dupree had done a runner of extraordinary speed and grace. I didn’t know his name that day but I vowed to find out double quick. I ordered Martin and Spencer to the mansion and told them they had twenty four hours to find the man on the lawn and bring him to me.

  They left, heads held high — the way they walked boosting my sense of well being. I would have the bastard in front of me in less than a day.

  Three days rolled by and my blood pressure rose by the hour. I ranted and I raved. I screamed and I threatened. I blew a fuse, put in a new one and blew it again. All to no avail. Dupree had gone to ground and no one seemed to know who he was or where he had fled.

  The lack of progress was starting to hurt. I had been dissed in my own home and I seemed powerless to act. That sort of story can gather legs and kick you in the nuts. I put thirty grand on the man’s head and let it be known that whoever brought him in would also get a boot up the promotion tree.

  A week later and I had attained an altogether new level of apoplexy. All other matters were thrown to the wind as I upped the ante to fifty grand and a brand new five series Beemer.

  Both Martin and Spencer told me to drop it but that just made me more determined to track the painter down. I set about it with a vengeance pulling in favours that should have been left owing. I dedicated 24/7 to the hunt and left Martin and Spencer to run the business.

  A month later I woke up to find the red lettering was back only this time it was more specific.

  ‘The End. One week.’

  I checked the CCTV cameras that had been installed but all I got was a grainy black and white picture of someone on the lawn at three in the morning. I had the fit to end all fits and threw everything I had at tracking the painter down.

  A week sped away and seven days later I was sitting in the office when I heard a commotion down stairs. I stood up, just in time to greet an industrial quantity of police officers as they flooded into the room.

  I was handcuffed and thrown in the back of a police car and taken to Paddington Green police station. It wasn’t the first time this had happened but it was the most heavy-handed. I asked for my lawyer as soon as I could and was left in a holding cell until he arrived. I told him to get me out and he duly vanished to do my bidding. When, after an hour, he hadn’t returned I hammered on the cell door demanding to see him again.

  Twenty more minutes of sitting in the cell and he reappeared — the look on his face was not positive.

  I can still remember his opening words in glorious Technicolor:

  ‘Someone has dropped you in it. I mean SERIOUSLY dropped you in it.’

  Sixteen months later I was sentenced to twenty years. The charges were as deep and wide as the Clyde. The last five years of my life were paraded in front of the court like an open book. Accounts, photographs, witness statements, copies of correspondence — you name it — it was thrown at me. It was as if someone had recorded my every thought and gesture over the last five years.

  My lawyer told me that only someone on the inside could have done this. I thanked him for that particular pearl of wisdom with a smack round the head. I had figured that out ten minutes after they started the questioning.

  When Martin took the witness box, under immunity from prosecution, I stood up in the court and told him he was dead. The judge held me in contempt but I was going down big style and didn’t give a fuck.

  Martin poured out damning evidence like a fresh torrent and by the time he finished I was so screwed my lawyer told me to try and cut a deal. I refused. It would have meant grassing up on my colleagues and even under threat of a life sentence I wasn’t going to roll on people.

  I entered prison on the fourth of November nineteen ninety three. I served fourteen years across five prisons and was released one year and three days ago.

  By then I had lost everything. Dupree — I had by now discovered his name — moved into the patch and Martin and Spencer vanished. Some of my colleagues stayed on but most left or met messy ends.

  I had only one visitor in fourteen years.

  It was two years from the end of my stretch. With no one returning calls, no one visiting or no one answering letters, I had been well and truly cut off years ago.

  My status in the prison was worth shit and I had received a regular stream of kickings — mainly from people I had crapped on as I had risen up the scum pond. You would think that it would have stopped as the years rolled by but there was always someone new that recognised me and took delight in reminding me of what I had done to them.

  Visiting time had long since stopped being a hope and, with freedom on the horizon, I should have been in a better place but I was so depressed that I was almost revelling in my pain. When the guard told me I had a visitor I laughed at him. I hadn’t had a visitor since day one. When Rachel Score walked into the visiting room I laughed again. I could fathom no reason for the visit.

  She sat opposite me in a dress that was three sizes too small with five-inch stilettos that she struggled to walk in. Her face was a cake of make up and her hair a badly cropped mush. I could still see what M
artin saw in her, but only just.

  She never said a word. She reached into her purse and took out a battered envelope and handed it to me. Then she was gone. I rammed the envelope into my pocket before a guard could see it and, back in my cell, took it out.

  I opened it and inside there was a single sheet of typed paper.

  ‘Hi Riko,

  I bet you didn’t expect to hear from me. I’m sorry I had to do what I had to do but things are not quite as they seem. I’ve no doubt that you are planning some sort of revenge on Dupree and I don’t blame you but, if I were you, I would leave it. Dupree is an evil fucker and fourteen years in prison is small change to what he could do to you if he wanted.

  When you get out why don’t you have a pint for old times sake. I’ve left one behind the bar of our old haunt. If the pub is gone by the time you get out I’ve asked Stevie to take care of things.

  Stay safe.

  Martin’

  The letter is in the diary next to you.

  Look at the time eleven fifty eight and forty seconds. Time to go. While I’m away, read the diary. It might help explain some things. I won’t be long.

  See you soon.

  Chapter 21

  Diary 2008

  Dear Reader

  Somehow Dear Reader sounds a bit naff but it will do. What follows is a diary — of sorts. I have worked from the digital recordings that I was given. As such the following is a transcription of conversations, monologue and other assorted meanderings. It wasn’t the easiest task I have ever performed and, at times some of the text may take a little license — all in the interest of keeping the whole thing lucid.

  I’ve marked it all up in diary fashion, as the recordings frequently referred to the dates. As such it seemed logical to display it in this form.

  You are probably reading this and wondering what I am gibbering on about but, hopefully, it will all make sense when you read the ‘diary’.