Hitman, Gangsters, Cannibals and Me

by Donal Macintyre

  After that, there followed a brief period as a roofer. My good work can still be seen on the Celbridge skyline, where one or two of the roofs have a distinctive, I would say characterful, concave appearance. In fairness to my work, the slates are still clinging on to the houses – but I try to keep upwind of them, all the same.

  My finest hour in the casual jobs market was perhaps as a window cleaner. I worked for Paddy, a good friend of mine growing up, who was a part-time football referee and part-time window cleaner. He was the only referee I knew who red-carded you for bad language and then effed and blinded you off the field as you went. As a window cleaner, Paddy had something of a professional handicap – he was afraid of heights. I wasn’t aware of this when I lied about my own fear of heights to get the job. This presented us with quite a predicament, until Paddy threatened to fire me if I didn’t ‘get up that ladder and wash the bloody windows’. I had a few terrifying moments three storeys off the ground, but in the end my lie paid off as I found my fear of heights dissipated and I had gained an unexpected new skill. The real danger lay in Paddy being engrossed in the racing pages while he was supposed to be holding the death-trap ladder. Every step of that ladder looked ready to snap, but Paddy, not having to use it himself, refused to accept that it needed to be replaced, and left me to risk life and limb while he chose his bets.

  Next came my Jackson Pollock period, made possible by my newfound ladder-climbing skills and a little well-judged bluffing. A group of us styled ourselves as painters and decorators by buying new overalls and splattering them with paint samples to make it look like we had been doing the job for years. This touch of authenticity got us several jobs. We would generally last a couple of weeks before being sacked amid accusations of dripping gloss and ruined carpets.

  No one found me out quite as quickly as the inner-city kids who I taught during a stint as an arts and crafts teacher while I was a student. They would listen to Rum Sodomy & the Lash by The Pogues as they built churches out of lollipop sticks. These kids spent their time out of school robbing cars and breaking into houses and they cut me some slack when they figured out that I knew less about arts and crafts than they did – but only as long as they could choose the music.

  * * * * *

  Later, when I met the serious gangsters, I would fall back on these experiences and I have found them more useful than any state exam or university education. By accident, I had discovered the art of lying for living, and living other people’s lives became my occupation for nearly 15 years, on the back of saying ‘yes’ when the answer was really ‘no’. It was a little over 15 years ago that I sat in a room full of producers in the World in Action offices at Granada in Manchester. ‘Has anyone here ever done any security work?’ the editor asked. Of course, I said yes, as if stretching my hand out for the keys of the Massey Ferguson all over again. This time, though, I couldn’t afford to end up in a ditch.

  2

  MY LIFE AS A HEADHUNTER

  Jason Marriner held his audience in rapture. He wrapped his arms around his rotund frame to mimic a belly laugh, though his ample waist was big enough that he didn’t need to exaggerate. He was telling a story about him and his mates going to Auschwitz, pissing on the graves of Holocaust victims and mocking their remains with goose steps and Nazi salutes. I looked on smiling, part of the accepting throng of hooligans and England supporters who were relishing the horrific story. We were in Copenhagen. Chelsea F.C. were on tour, and leading their travelling army was their hooligan firm, the Headhunters.

  ‘So, they’re having this tour thing,’ Jason painted the scene animatedly, ‘and they’re talking to all these Jerries about what happened … blah, blah, blah.’ Marriner describes dismissing the tour guide’s measured words and instead deciding to photograph his friend, Andy ‘Nightmare’ Frain, making a Nazi salute.

  ‘All the Jerries started going mad. Nightmare’s response was, “Fuck off! This is what I believe in,”’ Jason said, wiping his eyes mockingly. ‘Next he’s up on the roof acting like he’s having a David Gower [shower] where they put the gas in.’ Jason acted it out like he was in an Ealing comedy. ‘I think I put the final nail in the coffin when I was in the gas chamber and I was trying to get in the oven,’ Jason said, to roars of laughter.

  He told his drunken audience that this is what he believes in, and that is that. ‘And they all come to Auschwitz to work their bollocks off and they wind up with fuck all,’ he laughed. ‘I don’t care – all the Jews that didn’t get gassed, they moved to North London.’ Lovely chap! And he was my new best friend.

  * * * * *

  It all started in an office at BBC White City. The series producer, Pip, an old colleague from Granada’s World in Action, suggested that the world of hooligans deserved an in-depth undercover look. Bizarrely, he suggested that I was the man for the job.

  ‘I know undercover work is risky, but there are limits,’ I said. ‘You want me to be a raving England supporter [heresy for any Celt], a Chelsea supporter, a neo Nazi and an ultra-right-wing UDA/Johnny Adair sympathiser?’ That’s what he wanted from a ‘Paddy’ who was a BBC journalist and a non-practising Kildare fan. This was surely a stretch.

  The year was 1998 and England was in the World Cup in France. Desperate to avoid this rather impossible gig, I said, ‘Isn’t this all a bit eighties?’ Pip disagreed. He is an awardwinning current affairs veteran, who has risked his life on stories in places like Columbia and Nigeria, so he wasn’t going to let me wriggle out of this one.

  He showed me a rogues’ gallery of Police photographs of some of Britain’s most dangerous football supporters. The scars, the tattoos and the shaved heads all looked familiar and dangerous.

  ‘Why the Chelsea Headhunters?’ I asked.

  ‘They have been causing trouble for decades. A major undercover Police operation against them in the late eighties failed. They are still active and ‘at it’, in hooligan parlance.’

  He explained that Andy ‘Nightmare’ Frain was something of a recidivist offender, with more than 30 convictions for violence and public disorder. His most recent convictions included a three-and-a-half-year sentence for threatening a victim with assault if he didn’t drop charges against one of his associates. I think Pip must have seen the colour drain from my face.

  ‘Oh, you’ll be fine,’ he said, laughing. ‘Don’t be such a wimp.’

  To ease my concern, he repeatedly slashed his hand back and forth across his neck, showing me just how my throat would be cut.

  I was brought up to speed on what the Chelsea Headhunters had done to a West Ham fan at the beginning of the 96-97 season. Eight Headhunters were arrested after they slashed a supporter’s neck from ear to ear with a knife. His arm was also nearly severed and it took over 360 stitches to save the man’s life. Unsurprisingly, the victim did not turn up at court.

  * * * * *

  The decision was effectively taken out of my hands and it was agreed that I would volunteer to go to the World Cup in France for my induction as an England supporter and a hooligan. Nothing like being thrown in the deep end, I suppose.

  My first day as an Englishman abroad saw me in Marseille, surrounded by French riot police hoping to round up English hooligans. It was 35°C outside and the sun was beating down on the masses of pink-skinned tourists. There is something about the cocktail of alcohol, football and sunshine that is toxic and contagious. One England supporter caught everyone’s attention as he ran semi-naked towards the policemen, rubbing an Irish flag on his backside.

  His affront to the Irish, bizarrely outside an Irish bar, got the backs up of the local Police, and they went in to sweep up the miscreants who had begun taunting them too. It was not a particularly well-targeted swoop – it seemed that anyone with an English accent or in the company of English supporters was going to be dragged in. The provocation towards the French Police was escalating and they weren’t going to mess about.

  It looked like I was going to be arrested. About to be carried off, I protested
: ‘Je suis journalist, je suis Irlandais!’ On my first day in the field, I had to break cover to avoid spending a night in a prison cell in Marseilles. Thank God hooligans can’t speak French.

  It wasn’t quite a strip search but I was well patted down to ensure I didn’t have a concealed weapon, and I may as well have been naked. My legs were shaking with nerves. It obviously didn’t help my case that I was dressed like a hooligan, in the company of hooligans and chanting with them; I was essentially part of the angry mob. A French policeman looked me up and down suspiciously and took out the handcuffs. As a last resort, I took out my Irish passport and within minutes all was forgiven and I was allowed to go.

  My apprenticeship as an undercover hooligan was not going well and it wasn’t going to get any easier.

  * * * * *

  This day was a long time coming. My team and I had moved in next door to Jason Marriner, the football hooligan who, very appropriately, lived in Chelsea Close in Hampton, West London. The glorious moment when we had driven past his flat to see a ‘For Let’ sign in his block was the day we knew the gods were with us and that we might very well get close to this hooligan and use him to get close to the rest.

  We had been tickling the belly of this beast. For weeks and months we had Marriner under surveillance as I slowly introduced my world to his. First it was the Chelsea insignia in the car, then the requisite Stone Island gangster-chic clothes, then the wads of flash cash, which painted the picture of a criminal doing well. Over a period of about six months, we became well acquainted and he allowed me into his world. ‘The first time I seen you, I thought you were “at it”[i.e. a criminal],’ he told me.

  I was about to pick him up outside his tyre replacement centre in Feltham, near his Hampton Hill patch. He rented the property and ran a pretty shambolic business there. He was also in the car recovery business, so he was kept reasonably busy when he wasn’t being a football thug.

  We were going to a Leicester v Chelsea game. The Headhunters already had a history of trouble with Leicester fans. The match was to take place in Leicester and my producer, Paul, and I were going to drive Jason there.

  In this job you live on your instincts. My gut instinct that day was not good. There was something not quite right. We were due to pick up Jason alone: there were no other players in mind, but with Jason, you never knew. ‘Will there just be three of us in the car?’ Jason had asked me previously. I wondered why he had asked that question. It had stuck in my mind and made me slightly nervous. It was beginning to dawn on me that he might be considering bringing another hooligan along on the trip.

  When I pulled the car up at the garage, I checked obsessively to make sure that there were no camera remotes in the door pockets, or BBC paraphernalia, or exposed wires that might betray my real reason for being there. All was well. Jason’s Vauxhall Vectra pulled up and, sure enough, he was not alone: there were two men in the car with him. I hoped that they weren’t coming with us.

  I turned to Paul and saw his face blanch as he recognised one of the men.

  ‘It’s Andy Frain,’ he said.

  I had seen his face on photo-fits of hooligans, and I recognised it when I saw it. He was dangerous and capable of extreme violence. Knowing no limits and acting like an animal, he was a real gutter street fighter who would use any weapon at his disposal without a care for the consequences.

  Andy ‘Nightmare’ Frain is close to the heads of the right -wing terror group, Combat 18, the National Front and the BNP. He is a major figure and is all over Police records. He is known to have been heavily involved in the Nazi hate rock scene as well, and has the dubious distinction of being a former Grand Hawk of the Ku Klux Klan in the UK. He was once a National Front election candidate for Feltham. With more than 30 convictions he has certainly earned his ‘Nightmare’ nickname.

  His arrival was a shock of seismic proportions. I was chainsmoking and so was Paul. When I saw Nightmare’s face, I nearly sucked my fag in and swallowed it whole.

  The advice I have always been given for these situations is that less is more: keep it low key to start; be excited to see them, but not too excited. I warned myself not to use bad language. I have an Irish predilection for cursing, but in this situation, using the wrong bad language could blow our cover. It is difficult to use it for emphasis when you are undercover, so it is best not to use it at all.

  We had to be very careful. A misplaced word could have got us killed and that is no exaggeration. Psychologists who have debriefed me after undercover stints describe the skill you use in these situations as ‘Formula 1 concentration’. This is a state of mind, an acute awareness that the slightest error could have fatal consequences. We were about to spend a day in the company of very dangerous men and there had better be no slip-ups.

  I was no better prepared for this job than the man on the street. I have no military training, no surveillance courses or modules on covert tactics from City University. My real skill is the ability to feel the fear after the event. I break down and shake after days like this. And then I do the same thing again the next day and the next day.

  But there I was in Feltham, in an alien world in dangerous company. And then I remembered when I had most recently heard the nickname ‘Nightmare’. He was the guy who had gone with Jason to Auschwitz to make Nazi salutes and urinate on the graves of victims. I couldn’t believe it. He would be sitting within a foot of me in the car. I would be new to him and would be under his scrutiny for at least three hours. Any sign of weakness, vulnerability or of my real reason for being there, and there was no telling what could happen.

  We had been wrong-footed: this man arrived looking for a lift when we had expected to be dealing with Jason alone. Things could go horribly wrong, and, in these uncontrollable situations, they often do. I rushed back to the car where we had left some blank tapes in the pocket at the back of the front seat. We had left them there because we thought we would put Jason in the front. I frantically removed the tapes and the spare recording disks and put them in the driver’s door pocket. I threw a cigarette packet over them, hoping they were out of sight.

  Should we let Jason in the front or should we impose ourselves on the situation and put the guys in the back? ‘I think I should sit in the front,’ Paul said. We agreed that Paul should sit in the front for the first part of the journey while things settled down, and, when the mood was good, we whould put Jason in the front seat for optimum footage. This exchange was happening in quiet whispers as our hooligan friends got out of the Vectra and approached us. The boys loaded into the car. They were joined by a third hooligan, Ian. The three lined the back seat, with Nightmare in the middle where he could happily hold court. Introductions were made and I delivered a handshake to Frain, robust and firm to the end. ‘All right mate?’ I said. I held his gaze just a little longer than normal as a trust-building exercise. I hoped he didn’t think I was challenging him. In this world, handshakes are measured. They have a value and can help place you in the pecking order.

  ‘I can’t be doing with those black man’s slap and high-five, whoop-and-holler shit. I hate them fuckin’ wankers. Me, I like a good English handshake, a man’s handshake,’ Jason had said to me previously. I overcompensated. Frain’s hand was smaller than mine and he had a firm and measured grip, the grip of a man who was not sure of the person he was meeting.

  I drove off with three hooligans in my car, knowing – but not much reassured by the fact – that there would be a car following us and filming from a distance. I was equipped with a covert camera in the middle of my T-shirt. The dark designer top had a pin-prick in the middle of a letter of the brand name. That was the lens. Behind that was a small computer board and microphone. At the time, the technology was still quite bulky. The wires for sound and pictures went to a small DV recorder that was packed into a money-belt style wraparound holder, which also had pockets for batteries and spare tapes.

  Our very own ‘Q’ had provided me with a remote control fob that allowed me to turn t
he camera on and off. The moments when you turned it on and off were the ones when you were most likely to be caught out. Your body or your hand gestures might betray you, questions would be asked and things could spiral out of control very quickly. This is what’s called a ‘choke point’, a point at which you could crash and burn.

  There was also a camera hidden in the clock in the dashboard of the car. This gave a perfect view of the back seat and provided a great shot of Nightmare. On that day, however, I wasn’t too concerned about the shots. In these investigations, it’s the evidence and the words that are most important. The pretty shots can come later.

  It was a little quiet in the car. Instinctively, I went to turn on the radio but then remembered that the noise would interfere with the recording. The silence put even more pressure on the conversation and more pressure on me not to mess it up.

  Eventually, Jason and his pals started chatting in the back. The talk was of passport restrictions that the Police had put on football hooligans after the 1998 World Cup.

  ‘They took mine away. I still had to sign on when fucking England were playing abroad. I didn’t even have a fucking passport and I still had to go to the Police station,’ Nightmare complained.

  He was happy to take control of the conversation and it was clear that he was the leader of the pack. Putting on a mock PC Plod voice, he scoffed at the authorities’ efforts to eradicate hooliganism:

  ‘He’s the brains behind the outfit,’ he said, speaking about himself. ‘We’ve arrested them many times but they keep escaping our clutches.’