Essex Boy

by Steve 'Nipper' Ellis; Bernard O'Mahoney

  ‘He’s terrified, he thinks he’s going to die. If he drops the charges and disappears, will you please promise not to look for him?’ Rob’s brother-in-law pleaded.

  Tate pretended to think about the proposal for some time, and after muttering, ‘I don’t know’ several times to himself, he finally agreed to spare Rob’s life. Almost weeping with relief Rob’s brother-in-law walked out of the gym, leaving Tate and me collapsed in fits of laughter.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  *

  One afternoon Tate, Tucker and I met up at Jim Oonnor’s gym, Progress House, in Hadleigh. Most of the doormen and bodybuilders around the Southend area used to train there. Tucker had been going to this gym for about ten years, long before he got involved in drugs and the nightclub security industry. He used to train with a guy named William Theobald who, ironically, owned the land where Tucker eventually met his death. William’s brother, Peter, discovered the bodies. William once considered Tucker to be his friend and would regularly pick him up from his home to take him training. However, their friendship ended when Tucker left his wife and ‘drifted away into other things’.

  I had been attending Progress House on and off since leaving prison. It was more than just a gym; the people were friendly there and it was extremely well run. As soon as we met Tate, he gave Tucker and me energy drinks and after we had finished them he fell about laughing saying that they had been spiked with large amounts of the mind-bending drug LSD. ‘Don’t worry, I’m loaded too,’ he said. I hadn’t planned to spend my day hallucinating and thinking I was living on fucking Mars, but as the drug took hold I began to see the funny side of Tate’s prank. Come to think of it, I began to see the funny side of everything because I was completely off my tits.

  I was driving my white BMW 5.35 Alpina, Tucker his black Porsche and Tate was behind the wheel of a brand-new Porsche 928 that he had acquired earlier that day. Tate was extremely proud of the car and the number plate that he had purchased for it: ANO 928 S. Macho banter about our vehicles turned into bravado and boasting and before long we were hurtling around the streets of Southend, racing one another. Driving on the wrong side of the road and jumping red lights at more than 100 mph while high on drugs. It’s surprising that nobody was killed.

  After defying death for nearly an hour, we screeched to a halt outside a 7/11 convenience store in Hamlet Court Road. We all went in the shop to purchase a drink and as we did so Tate threw a bread roll at me and so I returned fire with a ten-inch birthday cake. Within seconds we were all engaged in a full-scale food fight. The store manager shouted at us to stop and said that he was going to call the police. Tate snatched the phone from the manager’s hand, punched it until it smashed and advised the ashen-faced man never to mention the police again. Unbeknown to us the manager had already alerted the police using a panic button and, as Tate continued to lecture the man about the pitfalls of involving them, they burst through the door. As Tucker tried to walk out of the shop one of the officers blocked his path and gripped his arm.

  When I saw that the policeman had hold of Tucker, I walked over to him and said, ‘Leave it out. You’re not going to nick him.’

  ‘And who are you?’ the officer replied.

  ‘Never mind who I am. Just let go of him because we are leaving,’ I said.

  As I was talking to the officer his colleagues were talking to Tate, who offered to give the shopkeeper £100 to cover the cost of any damage. Just as it looked as if a solution to please all had been reached, the officer talking to me pulled out his handcuffs and informed me that I was under arrest. I didn’t resist until he tried to put me into his car. I have never assaulted a police officer and despite my long list of convictions I genuinely bear them no ill will. There are good and bad in all walks of life and the police are no different, but I had made my mind up that I wasn’t going to be put into the patrol car, even if it meant physically resisting. Nervously eyeing Tate and Tucker, the arresting officer’s colleagues realised that they may have a problem if the situation deteriorated and so they pleaded with him to release me.

  ‘Fuck him. If he’s going to nick me, let him do it,’ I said.

  The officer tried to bend my wrist so that I would get into his car but I stood firm and told him that he was wasting his time. Tucker and Tate were glaring at the officer, who looked to his colleagues in the hope that they would back him up but they were having none of it.

  ‘Consider yourself lucky,’ the officer said as he unlocked the handcuffs and freed me.

  ‘There’s nothing lucky about it,’ I replied. ‘You wanted me to get in your car and I refused. Now you want me to go home, I have decided that I want to get into your car.’

  Hands up, I was being an arsehole, but I was out of my head on acid and acting the fool. I opened the rear door of the police car and climbed in. Fortunately for everybody concerned, including myself, a fleet of police vehicles converged on the scene and an inspector ordered that I be taken away immediately to the nearest police station.

  Tate and Tucker were released without charge but I was detained in the cells overnight. After nine hours in a police cell coming down from my acid trip, I was interviewed by the arresting officer. It was all rather informal; he asked me what I had been drinking to get into such a state and why I had been so keen to be taken into custody.

  ‘I think my drink may have been spiked,’ I lied. ‘As for wanting to get arrested, the truth is I didn’t. I was merely trying to attract your attention so that you wouldn’t nick my mate Tucker.’

  At the end of the interview, I was released without charge and warned about the dangers of leaving one’s drink unattended in pubs and clubs.

  That night I was at home with Tate when the phone rang; it was Tucker and he claimed that he was coming around to see us but he couldn’t find the flat. Tate and I looked at each other in complete bewilderment as we both knew that Tucker had visited my home on numerous occasions and knew exactly where I lived.

  ‘He is probably out of his head but he will find us eventually,’ Tate said. Ten minutes later, Tucker was hammering on my front door and when I opened it he rushed past me into the lounge. Shouting and swearing, Tucker claimed that he had just been involved in a fight with three men and had to abandon his car. Tate and I armed ourselves and asked Tucker to take us back to his vehicle so that we could find the culprits. We all got into Tate’s car and drove to a street named The Ridgeway. Tucker told us that he had stopped to ask a man for directions, the man had been rude to him and so he had got out of his vehicle and hit him. Two other men had then attacked Tucker and he claimed that he had knocked one of them out. Fearing he would be overpowered, Tucker said that he had decided to run rather than stand and fight.

  When we arrived at the scene of the alleged altercation, Tucker’s vehicle was parked at the side of road. It was locked, which I thought was odd if he had really got out of it in haste to fight. The three men he said that he had fought were also suspiciously absent. Tucker got into his vehicle and followed Tate and me back to the flat. I asked Tate what he made of Tucker’s story but he didn’t reply, he just looked towards the heavens and blew hard.

  As soon as we were in the flat Tucker and Tate began snorting cocaine. I asked them not to do it in my home but neither of them took any notice. As the night wore on, I was asked what the police had said to me when I was questioned about the food fight and when I told them the truth they immediately looked at one another.

  ‘Isn’t that grassing?’ Tucker asked Tate.

  ‘What the fuck are you on about? I have never grassed on anybody in my life,’ I replied.

  Tucker explained that when I had said I was trying to prevent him from being arrested I had mentioned his name and therefore I was grassing.

  ‘Oh, fuck off. It was a bun fight in a shop, not the Great Train Robbery. They arrested me and haven’t even charged me, so how can that be grassing?’ I said.

  Tucker looked at Tate and after a few moments he conceded that it had all bee
n a bit trivial. I don’t know why but I felt that Tucker and Tate had been trying to engineer a situation with me that night. I kept telling myself that Tate was a good friend of mine and wouldn’t dream of doing such a thing, but I overlooked the fact that my friend Tate was no more; his mind had been taken over by the shit he was sticking up his nose and in his veins every few hours.

  In the early hours of the morning, Tucker said that he had to go home and offered to drop me off at my car, which had been left outside the 7/11 store. Once we were alone in his vehicle I took the opportunity to speak my mind to him. I said rather bluntly that I thought that he was taking the piss out of me, adding rather swiftly that I was not being disrespectful, nor was I being confrontational; I was just saying exactly how I felt.

  Tucker pulled over to the side of the road, switched off the engine and said, ‘Nipper, I am really worried about you. It’s not me that’s the problem, it’s the drugs that you’re taking. They are making you really paranoid. I think the world of you, I would never harm you. You’re my brother.’

  I was taking one Ecstasy tablet a week, the odd acid trip and an occasional line of cocaine or ketamine, an Amy Winehouse-type habit, but Tucker’s words were so sincere I began to believe him and even experienced a twinge of guilt. That night I kept thinking about all that had happened and the following morning I rather foolishly mentioned to Tate that I thought there was something not quite right about Tucker. When Tate asked me what I was implying, I said that I thought Tucker was false, I didn’t believe that he wasn’t mugging me off, and I didn’t believe his story about the three men attacking him. I therefore thought that he was full of shit. Tate didn’t reply but I sensed my truthful comments about his hero had somehow upset him.

  I have always thought that if the truth hurts people then so be it; you cannot change the truth, so people just have to learn to deal with it. It wasn’t my fault that I was having serious doubts about the Mafia don that Tucker was making himself out to be. His partner Anna had recently given him a book about the Krays, which he had left at my flat. I had picked it up out of curiosity and flicked through the pages. I had burst out laughing when I read the inscription that Anna had written on the inside cover. ‘Let them hate you just so long as they fear you.’ Tucker was so proud of the dedication he had later read it out to Tate and me. As Tate feigned admiration and heaped praise on such deep, meaningful words, I sat cringing. Tucker was on drugs but he had no excuse for being totally deluded. Who in God’s name did he think he was?

  Tucker had a health food shop in Ilford, which was losing money, and so he told Tate and me that he intended to stage a burglary and take all of the stock before he bankrupted the business. It was agreed that Tucker would take me over to the premises so that I could give him advice about making the burglary appear genuine. After all, I did have a wealth of experience in that particular field. On the way to Ilford, we called into a clothes shop called Zoo, which sold top-of-the-range designer labels. I purchased £2,500 worth of garments and as I unrolled a bundle of banknotes with which to pay, Tucker said that he could do with the cash and gave the assistant a company cheque from his shop. After handing over the cheque and taking the money from me, he walked out of the shop. I knew that the cheque would never be honoured by Tucker because he had told me that he was folding the company, but he didn’t think to offer me so much as a drink out of it.

  When I mentioned the incident to Tate that evening, he surprised me by saying that I was getting too close to Tucker and I should not trust him. ‘He’s jealous of our friendship. He keeps hinting that he dislikes you and you shouldn’t be trusted. Be careful, Nipper. Be very careful,’ Tate said.

  I wish that I could go back to those moments when my friend Tate was thinking clearly, free from drugs. I would have kept him away from Tucker and he would still be alive today. Sadly, time marches on; it cannot be stopped and it cannot be turned back. Tate and Tucker were not dissimilar; each an unstoppable force, incapable of being pushed back, marching on and on towards their doom.

  A few months earlier, Jimmy Connor’s gym had been broken into and Tate had written a letter to Jim claiming that I was responsible. Hand on my heart I wasn’t and I have no idea why Tate blamed me, because we were close friends at that time. I suspect that it was because his drug addiction was loosening his grip on reality. Tate had woken me early one morning around the time of the burglary and demanded a gun. I asked him what the problem was but he had refused to tell me. Without my knowledge, Tate had taken a .38 revolver from my bedroom and then asked me to drive him to Jim Connor’s gym.

  Tate’s partner, Sarah Saunders, is Jim’s niece and I assumed at the time that there had been some sort of family dispute in which Tate had decided to intervene. When we arrived at the gym, Tate told me to park around the corner and he had then exited the car with the gun. I sat waiting for the sound of gunfire but, after a few minutes, Tate ran back and jumped into the car. As we sped away I noticed that tears were streaming down his face. I didn’t say anything and when we arrived back at the flat Tate went into his bedroom.

  Some time later, I met Jim who told me that he had been in the gym when he heard somebody knocking loudly on the door. When he had opened it, Tate was standing there gun in hand. Jim had asked Tate what he was up to but instead of answering he had just broken down. Embarrassed rather than alarmed Jim had tried to console Tate but he had simply turned and run away. Nobody will ever know what was on Tate’s mind that day. I am not sure that even Tate knew what he was thinking at the time.

  Not long after Tate’s letter had been delivered to Jim Connor I went to Progress House, left my keys and wallet at reception and went into the changing rooms. Once I had begun training somebody took my keys from reception and had a spare set cut at a local shop. They then returned my original set of keys to reception. The following night I had been out with Malcolm attempting to remove a safe from a supermarket. Unable to cut the back off and get at the contents of the safe, we had manhandled it through a fire door and into our van. Using chisels and cutting equipment at a workshop that we had access to, we eventually managed to prise the safe open only to find that it was empty. I was tired and in a foul mood when Malcolm dropped me off outside my flat at five o’clock the following morning.

  Thoughts of sleep were soon forgotten when I saw that my front door was wide open. Calling out to anybody who might have been inside I entered the flat and looked around each room. Whoever had been there had gone, but they had left the distinct smell of cigarette smoke and two dirty glasses in the sink, one of which was broken. I don’t know why, but I automatically assumed that I had been burgled by the man who lived directly above me. I armed myself with a hammer, knocked on the man’s door and when he answered demanded to know what he had been doing in my home. When the man denied ever setting foot in my property, I grabbed him by the throat and threatened to hit him in the face with the hammer unless he told me the truth. Still the man denied ever being in my home, so I walked back down the stairs mumbling incoherently and cursing the scum that commit burglary.

  The following weekend, Tate asked me if I had any amino acid capsules, which bodybuilders take for protein, and so I gave a handful to him.

  ‘These are no good, they are out of date,’ he said after inspecting them.

  I knew that there was nothing wrong with the capsules and so, when Tate suggested that I should try a couple myself, I agreed, just to prove that they were OK. Unbeknown to me, Tate had emptied the capsules and refilled them with ketamine. I can recall beginning to feel light-headed. The people in the room with me, whose faces became blurred, were laughing at me, but after that everything else is little more than a hazy memory.

  I did not know it at the time, but Tate had deliberately drugged me in the hope that he could goad me into murdering a man. As the ketamine capsules began to render me totally incapable of being able to rationalise or think for myself, Tucker and Tate confided in me that one of Tate’s cousins and a doorman I’ll call Ron R
edding had been the men in my flat, waiting for me to come home. It had been their intention, Tate said, to confront me about the burglary at the gym and cut my right hand off as punishment.

  Fortunately for me, the safe at the supermarket had kept me out until the early hours of the morning and they had tired of waiting and gone home. Tate leaned forward in his seat, embraced me and then whispered in my ear that I should kill Redding. I was completely out of my mind on the drug and Tate quite easily convinced me that it was a good idea.

  I can vaguely remember Tucker holding my video camera and laughing, he kept saying to Tate, ‘Be careful what you say. I’m taping him.’ They must have been drugged up too because Tate began pulling faces for the camera and was chanting, ‘Kill him, Nipper. Kill him.’ There was a 2.2 handgun in my flat that one of the firm had used in a shooting. Tucker handed me the weapon and said that if I was a ‘proper person’ I would shoot Redding. Almost zombie-like, I took the gun from Tucker, got into my car and went in search of the man my so-called friends had urged me to execute.

  I knew that Redding worked as a doorman at a pub near Leigh-on-Sea and so I drove up and down the street trying to catch sight of him. I saw Redding’s car parked outside the pub and so I pulled up further down the road, but at a place where I could still keep my eye on it. When Redding eventually finished his shift and left the pub, I followed him at a discreet distance. I knew that he lived in Basildon and so I began to try to think of suitable places where I could force his car to stop so that I could get out and shoot him. Without indicating, Redding’s car suddenly slewed across the road and pulled up outside a Kentucky Fried Chicken store. I couldn’t stop without drawing attention to myself and so I drove past Redding’s vehicle and pulled up about 100 yards away.