Essex Boy

by Steve 'Nipper' Ellis; Bernard O'Mahoney

  Five minutes later, Redding’s car flashed past me. Catching just a fleeting glimpse of the driver I was unsure if it was in fact Redding at the wheel. Confused by the drugs that I had unwittingly taken I decided to pull alongside the vehicle on a stretch of dual carriageway to see if my intended target was at the wheel. As I looked across at Redding, he looked back to see who the lunatic was who had so obviously been following him. In a blind panic I applied my brakes and let Redding take the lead once more. When Redding pulled up outside his home, I turned into an adjacent road and began checking that the gun was fully loaded.

  A short sharp tap at my window startled me and when I looked out Redding’s puzzled face was gazing back at me. ‘All right, Nipper, what are you up to?’ he asked. I knew that Redding would have armed himself with something before approaching my car and so I didn’t dare risk pointing the gun at him.

  ‘I’m looking for Henry,’ I replied. Redding had a friend named Henry and so he asked me what I wanted him for. ‘I don’t know but I better go and find him,’ I said before starting the car and driving off. The drugs were beginning to wear off by the time I had pulled up outside my flat. Tate had gone to bed and Tucker had left. I couldn’t believe that I had planned to shoot Redding, a decent man who to my personal knowledge had never intended to cause me any harm.

  My head was pounding because of the drugs Tate had given me and so I went straight to bed. When I awoke later that afternoon and went into the lounge, I saw that my flat was a complete mess. I am an extremely tidy person who likes everything in my home to be in order and so I was absolutely livid. Tate had recently held parties at my flat without my permission or prior knowledge but this mess hadn’t been caused by a party; it could only be described as an orgy of destruction.

  When I went into the bathroom, I found two naked teenage prostitutes in the shower, used syringes scattered around the floor and empty champagne bottles in the bath. I threw the girls out and after barging into Tate’s bedroom began shouting about him taking the piss out of me. Tate, who was barely able to focus on me because he was so drugged up, didn’t appear to even realise why I was so upset. When I began to tidy up my flat, I found a bag containing my kettle, a toaster and various other electrical goods. I had no idea why either Tate or Tucker would have put them in the bag. I certainly didn’t think that they had planned to steal them. Before I could ask Tate, he left the flat with his two prostitutes in tow.

  The following morning I opened the drawer in my bedroom to get some underpants. Hidden among my clothing I found a black leather bag stuffed with drugs and money. I was livid. Tate had hidden his drug stash in my room so if the police raided the house I would be accused of possession. He had not yet returned home and so I walked into his bedroom and packed his meagre possessions into a suitcase and left it by the front door. When he came home and saw the suitcase in the hall, he asked what I was up to.

  ‘You hid drugs in my fucking room. I don’t want you or your drugs in my flat. You’re a junkie and you don’t even know it,’ I shouted. Tate looked at the suitcase and back at me before replying.

  ‘I am no fucking junkie. I control the drugs, they don’t control me.’ Tate said that he had nowhere to go and pleaded with me to let him stay until he had sorted somewhere else out to live and, like a fool, I agreed. As I continued tidying up my flat I found a saucer in the lounge with what appeared to be cocaine on it. Tate had gone back out and so I tipped the powder in the sink and washed the saucer with boiling water. When Tate did arrive home that night, he was incoherent and barely able to stand and so he didn’t notice that his drugs had been disposed of.

  The following morning, when I got out of bed, Tate had already left the flat. When I entered the lounge, I found a crack pipe and a cocaine-like substance on a saucer so I threw the pipe in the dustbin and washed the saucer. When Tate walked into the flat later that day, he was with his brother Russell. As soon as Tate saw me he began shouting about me throwing away £600 worth of crack cocaine.

  ‘Are you so fucked you don’t realise you are taking it? There was less than a gramme of that shit on the saucer,’ I said.

  I reminded Tate that I thought that he had become a junkie and I didn’t want him or his drugs in my flat. Russell stood in the hallway without saying a word but when he took out a cigarette and went to light it I asked him not to do so. When he asked what my problem was, I explained that I did not smoke and therefore I did not like people doing so in my home. Russell put the cigarette in his mouth and asked me what I intended to do if he didn’t stop.

  Before I could reply, somebody had knocked the door and I went to answer it. A man in a suit began telling me how meaningless my life must be without the particular product that he was selling and so I thanked him for his advice and closed the door. When I went back into the lounge, I saw that Tate and his brother had gone into the garden to smoke. Russell didn’t say any more about the subject and so I too chose not to raise it. However, when Russell left my flat, Tate astounded me by saying that if his brother had started fighting with me then he would have joined in on my side. Up, down, happy, angry or depressed, there was no longer any way of telling which Tate I was going to encounter on any given day because of his drug addiction.

  Later the same day, Tucker’s friend Carlton Leach knocked on my door. Leach claimed that he had been involved in an altercation with a black guy while working on the door at a private party in Battersea, south London. Apparently the man had taken exception to the way Leach had treated him and rather foolishly returned firing a gun. I say ‘rather foolishly’ because Leach and several members of his door team had soon overpowered the man and beaten him mercilessly. The police were called and after Leach had agreed to make a formal statement against the gunman he was arrested. During the fracas Leach’s vehicle had been shot several times and the police impounded it in the hope of gathering further evidence. I wasn’t sure why Leach had decided to pour his heart out to me and so I asked him how he thought that I could help.

  ‘It’s like this, Nipper. I desperately need a car to get back and forth to work in London,’ Leach said.

  I had a second-hand red Ford Fiesta 1600 parked outside my home doing nothing, and so I said that he could take that. I had purchased the vehicle for my girlfriend, who was learning to drive. As she wasn’t due to take her test for two weeks I assumed that Leach would have returned it by then. The vehicle had not been taxed, so I gave Leach the log book and the money to tax it for me. While we were talking, I mentioned that my friend had just stolen a trailer full of quality leather jackets and he had given me 100 to sell on his behalf. Leach said that he would be able to sell 20 of them for me as a favour for loaning him the car. He picked 20 of the most expensive jackets, loaded them into the Fiesta and disappeared. I never saw the jackets or the vehicle again; I later learned that Tucker sold the car and the jackets the very same day.

  At approximately 2200 hrs that night my house phone rang, and when I answered it Donna Garwood, Tucker’s 16-year-old mistress, asked me if I had seen him. I wasn’t in the mood for doing Tucker or his friends any favours and so I replied, ‘No, I have not seen him and nor do I particularly wish to see him. He is probably at home giving his missus one up the arse.’ I had never liked Garwood. She thought that she could talk to people how she wanted simply because she was Tucker’s bit on the side. I had awoken one morning to find her and Tucker asleep in the spare bedroom of my flat. I automatically assumed that it was his partner and that assumption was reinforced when I used to go to a house I assumed was Tucker’s and she was there. Only when Tucker invited me to his real home did I meet his partner, Anna, and discover that the other house was, in fact, Rolfe’s.

  I am not the type of man that embraces deceit among alleged loved ones; my opinion of Garwood was therefore pretty low. As soon as I had told Garwood where Tucker might be she had slammed the phone down. Early the next morning, I was awoken by somebody hammering on my front door. Still half asleep, I opened it to find Tucker,
Rolfe and a man named Peter Cuthbert standing outside. Without saying a word the three men walked into my home and when I asked them what they wanted Tucker made the sign of a gun with his two fingers against his head.

  I assumed that he had come to pick up the 2.2 revolver that I had intended to shoot Redding with. I had wiped the weapon clean of all fingerprints since that night and hidden it in a cupboard, so I showed Tucker where it was. As soon as he had picked up the gun he grabbed my throat with his left hand, lifted me off the floor and shoved the weapon into my temple. Spitting phlegm he began screaming at me, ‘Fuck my missus up the arse, would you? Fuck my missus up the arse?’ After 20 or 30 seconds, Tucker shoved me into my bedroom and threw me on the bed. Sitting astride me he kept jabbing the barrel of the gun into my head and mouth and shouting, ‘I am going to show you what this can do.’ I could tell by the froth around his mouth and the crazed look in his eyes that he was high on crack cocaine. Tucker suddenly stopped shouting and ordered Rolfe to search the house for jewellery and anything else of value. He then took a butcher’s meat cleaver from inside his jacket and asked me if I would prefer to lose one of my hands or one of my feet. I thought that if he was going to sever one of my limbs I would at least survive the ordeal and so I could fucking shoot him. I am left-handed and so I held out my right hand, closed my eyes and waited for the searing pain.

  When I had finished silently counting to ten, I realised that Tucker was not going to carry out his threat and so I opened my eyes. Tucker was standing over me, his eyes were bulging and he was grinning like a madman. After snapping out of the trance-like state that he was in Tucker put the meat cleaver back in his jacket, turned and walked away. I jumped off the bed and began shouting, ‘What the fuck have I done?’

  Cuthbert held me back and repeatedly asked me to calm down but I was incensed. I pushed Cuthbert out of the way and went after Tucker. As he reached the front door he turned quickly, grabbed me by the throat and lifted me off the floor. Slamming me against a wall he pulled out the meat cleaver and threatened to bury it in my head. Cuthbert grabbed Tucker’s arm and pleaded with him to calm down.

  Fortunately for me, Tucker released his iron grip from my throat and walked out of the door. When my unwelcome guests had all left, I rang Tate to ask him what I was supposed to have done. He told me that Tucker was having a bad day and I should not worry about it. I couldn’t work out if Tate was joking or he simply couldn’t grasp the enormity of the liberty that Tucker had taken with me. I thanked Tate for his words of wisdom and rang Tucker to ask if he could give me an explanation for his abhorrent behaviour.

  Tucker exploded into a rage and began screaming at me, ‘Have you sorted it?’ When I asked him what it was that I was supposed to sort out, he replied, ‘You told Donna that I do my missus up the arse.’

  Before I could explain that it was a comment made in jest, Tucker said that he was going to put me on my knees, make me apologise and then shoot me in the head. ‘Go and fuck yourself up the arse, you mug,’ I said before ending the call.

  Tucker’s concern for his partner was about as meaningful as Garwood’s. In my opinion Tucker couldn’t care less about either woman; he just wanted people on tap that he could use to satisfy his own whims and wishes. A good example of this is when I returned home one morning to find three females naked in my bath. After asking who they were and what they thought they were doing, I was informed that they had spent the night in my flat snorting Tate and Tucker’s cocaine. I told them to get dressed and I would call a taxi for them. Half an hour later, the three girls left.

  The following week Tate, Tucker, Anna and I were enjoying an evening out at a nightclub when the girls who had been in my bath walked in.

  When they saw Tate and Tucker, they came over to say hello and one of them said to Anna, ‘Hi, you must be Donna.’ Tucker’s face looked like thunder.

  ‘Her name is Anna, now fuck off,’ he said, glaring at the guilty party. When the embarrassed girl walked away, Tucker summoned one of his minions, named ‘Ginger Mickey’, and whispered in his ear. Ginger Mickey disappeared and returned ten minutes later with a set of car keys, which he handed to Tucker. When Tate enquired what was going on, Tucker explained that Ginger Mickey had grabbed the girl who he was claiming had insulted Anna, and demanded her car keys. When the terrified girl had handed over the keys, Ginger Mickey had told the door staff that Tucker wanted her ejected from the club and they had complied. The car, a Mini Clubman, was driven away by Mickey and crushed at a scrapyard the following morning; the girl had no choice but to accept her loss because she was far too scared to complain.

  I am no hard man but I am nobody’s fool either. Others may have been intimidated by Tucker and his firm but I wasn’t going to forget what he had done to me, nor was I prepared to take any more of his shit. I left the flat immediately and purchased a combat knife. I then went in search of somebody who would sell me a gun.

  The first person I approached had an array of firearms for sale but when I mentioned who I may have to shoot he refused to sell me anything.

  ‘I am not protecting that bastard. It would make my day if he got blown away, but I am scared that he will find out I have sold you a gun to shoot him with,’ the man explained.

  I got much the same response from all the people I approached in Essex. However, I did eventually find a firearms dealer in south London who didn’t know Tucker. He sold me a bulletproof vest and initially offered me a sub-machine gun but I couldn’t afford it so I settled for a pump-action shotgun and a 2.2 revolver. On my way home, I stopped off at the Bull public house on London Road in Pitsea.

  After finding a space at the rear of the car park, I walked into the bushes and began cutting down the barrel and butt of the shotgun. As an ex-prisoner I was acutely aware that if I was caught with firearms I could be returned to custody for up to five years and so I kept one eye on the road as I worked hard to complete my task. Having cut the barrel off, I started work on the butt of the gun. At that moment a police car swept onto the car park and pulled up less than ten feet away from me. I laid flat on my stomach on a bed of nettles and thorns and grimaced as I fixed my eyes firmly on the police vehicle door. After a few minutes of inactivity, I risked looking at the occupants by raising myself up onto my elbows. Two officers were drinking tea from a Thermos flask and eating sandwiches. Despite the rash from nettle stings on my neck and the numerous scratches from thorns on my torso I managed to feel pleased with my situation. Forty-five minutes later, the police officers packed away their flask and sandwich boxes and departed.

  When I had finished cutting down the shotgun, I returned to my flat and was horrified to find that all of my clothing and most of my household goods had been stolen. Anything the thieves couldn’t carry had been smashed, slashed or broken. Food and a substance that looked like excrement had been smeared all over the carpets and walls; my home had been destroyed. I rang my girlfriend and advised her to avoid any contact with Tucker, Tate and Rolfe’s girlfriends. I explained that I was in an extremely dangerous situation and my adversaries would try to use my family and friends in their efforts to find and harm me.

  My girlfriend refused to believe that Tate and Rolfe would get involved but I just knew that my friendship with Tate no longer meant anything to him, and Rolfe would follow blindly in any event. After ringing my family and warning them that Tucker and his henchmen may come looking for me, I rang Donna Garwood and asked her what she had said to her moronic boyfriend.

  ‘I told him what you had said about his missus because it was out of order,’ she bragged.

  Garwood had clearly overlooked the fact that she was having a sordid affair with the partner of the woman she was pretending to be concerned about. I cannot repeat what I said to her but it involved sex and travel and I may have implied that she was a troublemaker. Having completed my rant, I telephoned Tucker and asked if he was responsible for the carnage at my flat. He didn’t admit or deny responsibility; he just laughed at me and said that my po
ssessions had been used to furnish a flat that he had acquired for Garwood to move into.

  ‘Tate’s taking his favourite prostitute off the game and she is moving in there too,’ Tucker said. ‘You don’t need your stuff anyway, Nipper, because I am going to kill you.’

  I cannot see the point in shouting about what you may or may not be going to do; I believe that actions speak much louder than words and so I simply hung up. I went into my flat and secreted myself in a small cupboard under the stairs. I had a clear view of the front door and had decided that as soon as Tucker or anybody else walked into my home I was going to open fire on them with the shotgun.

  I spent six hours crouched in that cupboard but I had to abandon my plan in the end because I was suffering from extreme cramp and a lack of sleep. I went into my bedroom and lay down, still clutching my weapons, on what was left of my bed before falling into a deep sleep. I was awoken the following morning by the sound of my phone ringing. When I lifted the receiver and groaned ‘Hello’, Tate asked me how I was and apologised for Tucker’s behaviour.

  ‘Don’t worry, Nipper. It’s all sorted,’ Tate said. ‘We’re going to Canning Town to sort out a bit of business and then we will come around to see you at midday.’

  I told Tate that I would wait in for them and replaced the receiver. As soon as I had done so I put my bulletproof vest on, grabbed my firearms and ran towards the cupboard under the stairs. At the last minute I changed my mind and ran out of the back door and into the garden. I was looking for a suitable shooting position so that I could take them out in quick succession. As I left the garden and walked up an alleyway at the side of my flat I heard the screech of tyres and car doors slamming. I dashed behind a parked car in the street and checked that my weapons were loaded. I could see Tate and Tucker’s Porsches abandoned in the middle of the road and I could hear my front door being kicked open. I then heard Tate calling out my name as he searched the flat and Tucker was shouting out to Rolfe to look for me in the back garden. All three of them then met in the street just yards from my hiding place and began discussing their next move.