Essex Boy

by Steve 'Nipper' Ellis; Bernard O'Mahoney

  I must admit, I was rather apprehensive about arriving in the prison where I had first met Tate, because he also happened to be incarcerated there, on the hospital wing. As soon as I entered the reception area I was separated from the other prisoners and led into an office.

  ‘You will have to be placed under close protection because we know that Tate will try to kill you,’ a stern-faced officer told me.

  ‘I am not being put in a cell next to sex cases and grasses, so you can forget protection,’ I replied.

  The vast majority of inmates requiring protection were inevitably such ‘people’ and the very thought of living side by side with them horrified me. I would much rather have faced Tate than have a sex offender as my neighbour.

  The officer could not force me to accept protection and so he said that I could be housed on D Wing where most of the trusties were housed. When I arrived on D Wing, I met a man I knew named Billy Archer.

  I was telling Billy about the problems that I had involving Tate, Tucker and Rolfe and my attempts to shoot them, when suddenly Billy started to laugh and said, ‘Fucking hell, Nipper. That was me you were planning to kill at the Esso garage in Lakeside. Tucker contacted me and said that you had tried to shoot him. He was aware that you knew what car he drove and that you would probably try to target him in it, so he asked me to garage it. In an effort to outwit you, Tucker then started using another motor. On the day you saw his Porsche parked near the Sandmartin pub roundabout I had picked it up from his house and was in a mate’s house sorting out somewhere to store it. Thank fuck you never did blast the windscreen and shoot the driver.’

  I apologised to Billy as I would never have done the guy any harm. My only excuse was that I had not been thinking straight. Fortunately for the trio, I had not been shooting straight that week either.

  Despite the countless intrusions into my life, I had remained a keen bodybuilder and so I applied for, and was given, a job as a gym orderly. After a game of baseball one day, I had been walking back across the sports field towards the wing with a baseball bat resting on my shoulder. I had hung a bag containing the ball, gloves and various other items we had been using to play on the end of the bat.

  As we reached the door to the wing somebody had said, ‘I will see you later, Steve,’ and another voice behind me added, ‘Yes, and I will see you too, Steve.’

  It sounded like a veiled threat to me, so I turned around and said to the person behind me, ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  ‘I’m Mickey, Pat Tate’s mate,’ he replied. When I raised the baseball bat in readiness to launch Mickey’s head across the prison yard, the bag of accessories slid down the shaft of the bat and onto my wrist. Feeling somewhat foolish, I threw the bag onto the floor and swung the bat backwards in readiness to strike.

  Billy Archer grabbed me and began shouting, ‘Whoa, whoa, Nipper. Leave it out. He’s all right.’

  Mickey raised his open hands to indicate that there was no threat of violence and so I lowered the bat. Mickey introduced himself as ‘Mad Mickey’ Bowman from south London and said that he had only been joking about being a friend of Pat Tate.

  ‘Me and Billy Archer are in here because of a bit of business we were going to do with Tate and his mate Tucker. I don’t trust the geezers,’ Mickey said.

  He told me that he and Billy had arranged to meet Tate and Tucker at the Happy Eater restaurant in Basildon, the fast-food outlet that Tate had robbed many years earlier. I have no idea what Billy and Mickey were planning to do that involved Tate and Tucker but Mickey did tell me that when they arrived for the meeting he instinctively smelt a rat.

  ‘Call it intuition, a sixth sense, whatever. It didn’t feel right and so I said to Billy, let’s get the fuck out of here.’ Billy thought that Mickey was just being paranoid and tried to reassure him that everything would be OK. Billy reversed his vehicle into a parking bay and the two men then waited for the arrival of Tucker and Tate.

  When there was no sign of them after 30 minutes, Billy looked across at Mickey in the passenger seat and said, ‘You’re right, mate, something stinks. Let’s get out of here.’

  As Billy started up the engine and prepared to drive out of the car park several armed police officers jumped out of the back of a nearby van and surrounded his car. I have no idea what – if anything – the police found in the vehicle, but Billy and Mickey found themselves on remand in HMP Chelmsford awaiting trial. They certainly didn’t need to employ the services of the security guard that had pursued me, aka Sherlock fucking Holmes, to work out that they had been set up and neither man was very happy about it.

  While in HMP Chelmsford, Billy and Mickey were reliably informed by none other than Pat Tate that it had been Tucker who was responsible for their arrest. According to Tate, Tucker had heard that Billy and Mickey were intent on taking part of his business over and so decided to have them removed. I cannot say if Tate was simply blaming Tucker to deflect blame from himself. Alone and in prison it can be dangerous if the other inmates think you’re an informant. Billy and Mickey chose to believe Tate and good relations between the men were restored. When Tate found out that they had been talking to me, he offered them £10,000 to have me ‘done’ in my cell but, to their credit, they refused point-blank to get involved. ‘Watch your back. Tate is trying to get you murdered,’ Billy warned me. ‘If you do have any further problems with him or those other mugs, let me and Mickey know and we will back you. Tate’s an OK guy but he does need putting in his place occasionally.’

  Apart from Tate’s effort to have a contract taken out on my life, nobody said anything offensive or threatening to me about my differences with the trio while I was in HMP Chelmsford. There was one minor incident. One morning the prison was locked down and specially trained dogs were brought in to search for a gun. This came about after the prison had received an anonymous tip-off about a firearm being smuggled in to shoot somebody. I was in no doubt that the story had been invented by my enemies to unnerve me but it hadn’t worked. I was angry, not afraid. The more I thought about what Tate, Tucker and Rolfe had done to me, and the fact that I now faced life imprisonment for defending myself against them, the more it made me want to kill them. I knew that if I did survive any attack from their associates while in prison, I still might have to face the prospect of a lifetime behind bars for trying to shoot them, so I began to think of a story that would minimise my sentence.

  Being caught in possession of a loaded gun is a very serious offence, particularly when the authorities believe that it is your intention to endanger another person’s life with it. I decided, therefore, to say that I had no intention of shooting anybody but myself with the weapon. Nobody would disagree that if Tucker and his firm had caught me, I would have faced a slow and very painful death. I decided, therefore, to say that I had the gun in my possession so that I could shoot myself if I was captured rather than face being tortured.

  To my surprise, the prosecution accepted my explanation and dropped the possession of a firearm with intent to endanger life charge. Around the same time, Tate, Tucker and Rolfe also withdrew their statements and told police that they were no longer prepared to attend court. They were not showing remorse or attempting to assist me in any way, as usual they were merely looking after themselves. Malcolm Walsh had made a copy of the tape of the court proceedings during which Tate, Tucker and Rolfe had been exposed as grasses. He had given a copy of the tape to one of Tucker’s firm and advised him to contact Tucker after he had listened to the contents.

  ‘Tell them to withdraw their statements, and only when they have done so will we give them the original tape. I am sure the matter can be forgotten, they wouldn’t want this tape finding its way onto the streets,’ Malcolm had said.

  The very same day, Tate telephoned the police from prison and Rolfe drove Tucker to Grays police station and, after making brief statements withdrawing their evidence, the three attempted murder charges I faced were dropped. When I attended Chelmsford Crown Court for sentencing
, I still thought that I would receive a five-year sentence for possessing a firearm and ammunition.

  All prisoners who have been sentenced to three months’ imprisonment or more have to sign a document prior to being released stating that they will not have a firearm or ammunition in their possession for a period of five years after their release. If they are sentenced to three years’ imprisonment or more, then the ban is for life. The maximum sentence for breaking this law is five years; you then get an additional sentence for possessing the firearm. I prepared myself mentally for a very rough ride.

  Rocking gently back and forth on my heels in the dock I dared not look at the judge as he began to sum up the case. ‘Please no more than five, please no more than five,’ I kept saying over and over again to myself. The judge paused momentarily before addressing me directly.

  ‘Steven Ellis, I am in no doubt that you feared for your life and for the lives of your family members. The men who sought to harm you are undoubtedly vicious thugs, cowards and bullies, but that does not give you the right to arm yourself and roam the streets of Essex. This is England, not the Wild West. You will go to prison for 15 months.’

  Turning to my family in the public gallery I raised both hands above my head and began shouting, ‘Yes, yes, yes.’ I thanked the judge and almost skipped down the steps to the holding cells to begin my sentence.

  CHAPTER SIX

  *

  While serving my prison sentence, I was approached by a man who introduced himself as Tony. I had noticed him staring intently at me earlier in the day, not in a sexual way I hasten to add, although you do get a few of those in jail. His face was unfamiliar and so he had begun to unnerve me. Forever cautious but always polite, I had asked the man who he was and why he thought that he knew me.

  ‘I am Steve Darrow’s brother,’ he replied.

  I shook Tony’s hand and said that I had known Steve for several years but was unaware that he had a brother. Steve had been one of the very few kids at my school that had never tormented or bullied me. Tony told me that he hated his prison job cleaning toilets and would do anything to work alongside me as a gym orderly. Feeling obliged to repay his brother’s kindness, I did what I could to make Tony’s stay in prison carefree by putting him in touch with those that sold contraband, and I also put his name forward for a job in the gym. Less than a week later, Tony was given a job working with me.

  Since gym orderlies spend longer periods of time out of their cells than many other inmates do, prison staff insist that they reside together; it simply saves prison officers the trouble of having to open up or lock several cells at irregular times rather than just one or two. For the next three months, Tony and I co-existed rather than lived together in my cell. I say that because Tony found it hard to cope with his loss of liberty and my never-ending practical jokes. I tended to forget the world that we had left behind but Tony was always pining for it. He would be sitting on a chair looking morose and gazing into space and I would bounce a healthy portion of my dinner off his head or douse him in water. He never did see the funny side of my pranks, but they always made me laugh.

  The day I was discharged from prison was undoubtedly the happiest that I had ever seen him. Two days before that magical day, when I was to walk to freedom, my father had been confronted in the street by Tucker. The fact that my youngest sister was also present meant nothing to the bully as he shouted obscenities and warned that I would be murdered as soon as I set foot outside the prison gates. When I was told about Tucker’s threats, I applied to the prison governor to be released at a different time from any of the other inmates. I wanted to foil any plot that Tucker may have planned to attack me, but my plea for common sense was denied.

  With no help forthcoming from the prison service, I arranged for a friend to pull up outside the prison in his car. As soon as the gates were opened, I ran out, jumped into the car and we raced away. Fortunately, Tucker had been making more empty threats and was nowhere to be seen. I felt an obligation to visit my friend who had sold me the Volvo. The very least that I owed him was an apology for all the trouble that my actions had caused. Looking genuinely pleased to see me, he thanked me for the Christmas card that I had posted through his door on the day of my arrest but added that he wished I had never bothered. Puzzled, I asked him what he meant.

  ‘The police officers who saw you that day had no idea what was in the envelope you put through my letterbox, so they raided my house again. They found a small amount of cannabis and as it was my second offence within a few months I was imprisoned for six weeks.’

  Mumbling yet another apology, I walked sheepishly to my friend’s car and we drove off. It’s fair to say that I am no longer on his family’s Christmas card list and they are most definitely not on mine. God forbid that I ever darken the poor man’s door again.

  I knew that I could not remain in Essex because Tate and Tucker were still threatening to have me killed. I had no idea where to go, so I simply laid out a road atlas, closed my eyes and pointed my finger at the map. When I opened my eyes, I saw that I had selected Bournemouth as the place for my new life to begin. After collecting my car and my personal belongings I said goodbye to my family and headed for the south coast.

  Leaving prison and then moving to a completely new area is difficult enough, but when you have little or no money it is nigh on impossible. Landlords demanded references and two months’ rent in advance and potential employers snubbed me as soon as they learned of my most recent address. I ended up ‘living’ in a tiny dingy bedsit. During daylight I would look for work and at night I would sit in a local bar sipping lemonade, as the very thought of spending an evening lying on my bed watching the damp climb the walls of my ‘tomb’, as I called it, horrified me. While standing in a queue at a petrol station one morning, I noticed that the till was crammed with cash and there did not appear to be an alarm system. During my numerous lemonade-sipping sessions, I had become acquainted with a local criminal and that night I mentioned the garage and the contents of its till to him.

  When the pub closed, we drove to the garage and after looking around agreed that we would break into it the following night. The easiest point of access appeared to be the roof and so after climbing up onto it, we removed a section of tiles, cut through the roof felt and dropped down into the loft. After working out roughly where the till would be below, we sawed through the joists and removed the foam tiles from the false ceiling. Unbeknown to my accomplice and I, the garage proprietor had installed a sophisticated listening device that was connected to a control centre. As we hacked and sawed away at the joists a silent alarm was activated and the police were notified that intruders were on the premises. When we heard a car drive onto the forecourt, we assumed that it was somebody checking to see if the garage was open, so I advised my friend to stop sawing until the car had gone. After a few minutes, the car remained on the forecourt with its engine running and my friend began to panic. He urged me to make a run for it with him.

  ‘It’s the police, Steve, I just know it. Let’s get out of here,’ he said.

  I honestly didn’t think it was the police, so I told him to shut up and be quiet. Five minutes later, I began to wonder if my accomplice’s concerns were founded and the car outside might belong to the local constabulary. Lowering my head through the hole in the ceiling I glanced towards the forecourt and saw a policeman staring straight back at me.

  ‘Fucking run. Get out of here,’ I shouted to my friend.

  I managed to get out of the loft and onto the roof quite quickly but my accomplice, who clearly enjoyed his food, struggled to fit his large frame through the small hole that we had made. Leaping almost cat-like from the roof, I landed on the other side of a large fence in somebody’s garden. As my friend continued to struggle to haul himself out onto the roof, a police officer grabbed both of his legs and hung on to him. Moments later, both men ended up on the shop floor buried beneath a heap of plasterboard and ceiling tiles.

  Nobody appeared to be
pursuing me, so I walked briskly down the road and hid among some bushes under a large conifer tree. I must admit I felt pretty pleased with myself having escaped the long arm of the law with such ease. ‘In half an hour everybody will have gone and I can take a leisurely walk home,’ I told myself as I lay under the tree staring up at the stars. I tried to scream as I was suddenly dragged backwards from the bushes. The pain in my left leg was excruciating but I was in total shock and so no noise came out.

  Two large police Alsatian dogs had gripped my legs in their jaws and were running back towards their handler as if I were a stick he had thrown for them to fetch. Just when I thought that it couldn’t get any worse, a full-figured policeman landed on my chest and informed me that I was under arrest. When he asked if I wished to make any reply to his caution, I shook my head, not because I wanted to remain silent, but simply because I was barely able to breathe.

  The dogs had been a tad overenthusiastic when removing me from my hiding place, so I was taken directly to hospital rather than the police station as I needed to have the gaping wounds in my arse and legs sewn up. As well as a fistful of powerful painkillers and a clean pair of pants, I was in desperate need of a decent solicitor. I was still on parole from prison and any conviction could have led to me being returned to complete the remainder of my sentence. When I raised my concerns with a solicitor, I was advised that because I had suffered such serious injuries during my arrest it would be unlikely that I would be treated too harshly. Despite a plethora of damning evidence against us, both my friend and I refused to accept our guilt and so we were bailed pending further enquiries. Now that the police knew I was in town and that I was facing a prison sentence, I decided that it would be a good idea to leave. Aiming the finger of fate once more at my atlas, I closed my eyes and prayed for a destination awash with opportunities.