Throughout the race I clung on for dear life as my nether regions slipped closer and closer to a certain camel exit point. This was starting to look like a very strange act of bestiality, so I tried to pull myself up, to ride a little higher. Then the distinctive rocking motion settled in and my beast really took off. Suddenly, we were bounding ahead and before long I was in the lead. ‘Go on, MacIntyre, you were born to this!’ I said to myself, suddenly feeling like a professional. ‘Lester Piggot, eat your heart out; robot jockeys, eat your hearts out!’ I passed the Sheikhs’ stand and there was bewilderment at the fat, lobstercoloured Irishman haring down the course, out of control. Some spectators scrambled up the bank of the course for safety, and I didn’t blame them one bit.
Siad was slightly perplexed by my performance. He had forgotten to tell me that winning is considered crass in this culture. It is how the camel runs that really matters, and it is almost considered bad sportsmanship to win. Siad, nonetheless, wouldn’t give me the victory and he chased me down, whipping his beast into a nuclear reaction. We hit the notional finish line together, and a draw was declared. The crowd cheered and there was celebration all round at the gentlemanly outcome. I was just glad I hadn’t killed anyone.
The camel was still spitting and frothing, but I was off and I didn’t care any more. I had seen into the abyss: the greendrenched mouth of a camel. I had smelt its breath and its hair oil, and its sweat had congealed on every part of me. We were as one, but no more, and I can’t pretend that I wasn’t happy to see the back of my camel friend.
* * * * *
The next time I saw a camel, it was well-done and between two baps. I know that might sound odd but I was attending an Edwardian-themed evening with Michelin-star chef, Heston Blumenthal, celebrating the daring age of exploration and the achievements of Scott, Shackleton and T.E. Lawrence. He put a modern twist on it with the ‘Humpy Meal’, which consisted of camel burgers and a rose petal and sand-salt accompaniment. There were even little burger boxes. As I bit into the Humpy Burger, I savoured it much more than Heston or my dinner companions could ever know. ‘This is for the welt on my bum,’ I thought, biting into the succulent meat, ‘and that is for the third-degree burns on my hands.’
Revenge, as it turns out, was a dish best served warm, with fries. And far from being sweet, it was in fact pleasantly savoury.
4
THE DOG’S HEAD
‘This is Manchester: by day it’s run by police, by night it’s run by gangsters. Manchester is where I was born, where I live and where I’ll die.’
DOMINIC NOONAN
I hadn’t intended to spend five years filming with a major criminal. As with all great adventures, it was an accident; I was going to say ‘happy accident’, but ‘disturbing’ is perhaps more appropriate. It was 2003 and I had spent 11 years as an undercover journalist. I had had enough of it and it had had enough of me. I was on the hit lists of right-wing terror groups, crack dealers and gun-runners because of various operations I had been involved in, and my face was too well known for me to continue doing covert operations in the UK or Ireland. Ironically, my success as an undercover reporter had made me unemployable. My job as covert crime fighter had evaporated before my very eyes as the investigations were broadcast.
The truth is that keeping your sanity while at the same time trying to maintain three or even four identities is a difficult task in itself. It’s a pressure-cooker kind of existence and you’re constantly aware that your cover could be blown at any time. It was time to move on.
While I was figuring out what to do next, I decided to do some research at Belmarsh Crown Court, one of London’s most secure courts, used for the trials of major terrorists and gangsters. I wanted to make a very aggressive, confrontational series on serious criminals. My plans were dependent on the cooperation of a very uncooperative gangster class.
In the dock of Court 3 stood Dominic Noonan, a large bulldog of a man, over 20 stone at his heaviest. His shaven head, thick neck and grave-digger hands gave no hint of a man who speaks Urdu and has experience of running a multimillion-pound crime empire.
Dominic is a member of the infamous Noonans, a well-known criminal family from Manchester. He changed his name to Dominic James Lattlay Fottfoy by deed pole while in prison, where he has spent 25 of his 44 years.
Every day in Court, the judge would struggle with the name before eventually asking Dominic if he would mind if he abbreviated the name to Mr Fottfoy. Dominic nodded his assent. The judge then asked Dominic the derivation of the name.
‘Many years ago my dad used to say to me, “Just look after those that look after you, fuck off those that fuck off you.” So I changed my name to Lattlay Fottfoy: that’s what the initials stand for.’
The Court, including the jury, collapsed in laughter.
Dominic had been caught more or less red-handed with over half a million pounds’ worth of heroin. He told the jury that he was under the impression that he was providing security for a shipment of foreign currency. Imagine his shock when Customs and Excise arrested him and told him that he was in fact transporting a class-A drug! The handover of the consignment to a major London criminal gang was filmed by Her Majesty’s Customs and Excise. It did not look good for Noonan or the other defendants on trial.
By some quirk of fate, Dominic had been granted bail and was free to chat with me outside the Court. There were few who could envisage a not-guilty verdict for the charismatic gangster, but those who had followed his criminal career wouldn’t put any Houdini-like act past him.
Every time he appears in the dock, the Court is inevitably surrounded by a platoon of armed police and marksmen. His last conviction saw the judge lament that he could only give the Manchester godfather a maximum of nine and a half years in jail. The Judge sounded crestfallen as he told the Court of the limitations of his sentencing powers and said: ‘This man is a menace to society. He is one of the country’s most dangerous criminals.’
* * * * *
I first met Dominic Noonan, the head of the notorious crime family, in a circular corridor inside Belmarsh Crown Court.
‘Everybody I know wants to kill you. My brother was asked to whack you; I can see the job isn’t done,’ he told me.
‘He’s obviously not very good, then,’ I replied, holding my ground.
As I chatted with him, I realised that we had much in common. He was facing the very real possibility that he would spend the rest of his life either behind bars or under threat of a rival’s bullet in the head: either way, he was facing a sentence every day he woke up. Such pressure creates a vulnerability that is easier to share with strangers than those close to you. I had had to face down kidnapping and death threats and some days I felt that same fatalism that Noonan lived with. He looked into my eyes and recognised that we had both experienced terrible things. Indeed, Dominic had been both perpetrator and victim of ‘experiences’ that are far too graphic to write about here.
He believed that we were born on the same side of the street but had chosen different paths in life: his was a life of crime and mine was one of exposing it. I was a little uncomfortable with his assessment but I was glad that he felt we had something in common. Added to this was our shared Irish background and an obliviousness to danger that had threatened to end both our careers and our lives. I think these are the reasons why one of the UK’s most dangerous criminals decided to invite me to spend five years filming him and his criminal network.
The six women and six men of the jury spent four days deliberating on the verdict. We were taking bets on Noonan’s fate in the production office.
‘Five pounds says that he will be sent down,’ I said to Sam, one of the producers.
‘He’s the Teflon Dom,’ said Sam, ‘I wouldn’t put anything past him.’
As we waited for the verdict with Dominic, the stress in the courtroom was palpable. Occasionally, the jury would return for guidance. There would be a flurry of excitement and then they would return to their deliber
ations and we to our tea and coffee. On one occasion, we were joined by a senior Customs and Excise officer. Dominic and his adversary were polite to each other, almost to the point of playfulness, and it was obvious that there was an element of gamesmanship to their relationship. Eventually, the moment of truth came and the verdict was given: ‘On all four counts, we find the defendant not guilty.’ Just one defendant in the multimillion-pound trial was convicted, but he had already skipped the country. Dominic would remain a free man.
When I asked him for his reaction to the verdict, he was pumped up on adrenalin and could hardly believe that he had escaped the jaws of jail.
‘It was the right verdict to come back with. At the end of the day, my solicitors and my barrister did the investigation for my case to prove that I was innocent, nothing else, nothing short, nothing less.’
He was feeding me a line. Looking on, I felt that a guilty man had walked free and I don’t think Dominic would mind me suggesting that he was more shocked at his acquittal than anyone. Justice is not always about guilt or innocence. Convictions are lost as defendants bob and weave and demonstrate acting skills that create just enough doubt in the jury’s mind to secure their freedom.
‘What now?’ I asked him.
‘I’m going to go back [to Court] because they’re sorting out my expenses. It’s cost me a lot of money, this trial.’
The Teflon Dom had got away with it again, and he was going to ask the taxpayer to sweeten his acquittal with a honey pot of cash. You would expect no less from Mr. Fuck off Those That Fuck off You.
My new best gangster friend celebrated in swashbuckling style. Champagne and chips were the bill of fare at his local pub back in Manchester, where friends, family and criminals gathered to celebrate his victory and welcome him home.
From the stage, Noonan addressed his posse: ‘To British justice! To British justice! Thank you everyone for coming tonight. As you know, I was on a very serious charge down in London.’ He went on to explain how there had been confusion over what was contained in the shipment: ‘I went down there as security; someone else was picking up some drugs. I never knew about it; I thought it was a load of money.’ But he didn’t need to fool this audience and admitted: ‘I’m talking a load of bullshit, but who gives a fuck?!’ Away from the Courts and amongst his own, he felt comfortable enough to taunt the prosecutors with a pretty frank confession.
‘Enjoy yourselves! Eat the food; don’t wait for me, cos I just had some chips on the way up. This is dedicated to the Customs and Excise,’ he said as he launched into the Elvis classic, ‘Caught in a Trap’.
* * * * *
Dominic Noonan is an unusual cocktail: dangerous, brutal, amusing, smart and devastatingly cruel. His character has been influenced hugely by his Irish family and background. Born into abject poverty, they lived in a two up, two down house in the Harpurhey area of North Manchester. All 14 of the siblings have Christian names beginning with the letter ‘D’.
‘Me family all came from Dublin, and so the kids were all named after the capital of Ireland, Dublin. There is Derek, Delia, Damien, Diana, you get the picture.’
The Noonan kids would rob the stick fences of neighbours for firewood. In an effort to get a bigger house for her family, their mother once set fire to their home. ‘I remember seeing the firemen in the backyard,’ Dominic told me. ‘I was just eight at the time.’ Despite their home being badly damaged by the fire, the council refused to move them from the cramped twobedroom house. It was a dysfunctional home and Dominic mother turned to alcohol to cope. ‘Me dad was soft as fuck and my Ma was the boss. He was never in trouble with the law but Ma was often brought home drunk in the back of a police van.’ The police often called to the house to arrest or question one of the seven boys.
But it was the death of Noonan’s younger brother, Damien, in a motorcycle accident in 2003 that brought the family’s influence and power to public attention. Large parts of Northwest Manchester were brought to a standstill during the funeral. Ten police riot vans supervised the wake. One hundred policemen blocked the roads for the cortege. Five thousand people lined the streets. These are impressive numbers and give some idea of the Noonans’ influence in the area. Greater Manchester Police asked the family to contribute to the cost of the operation. The Noonans, to no one’s surprise, refused.
The family had become well known in Manchester as a kind of ‘Murphia’, or Irish mafia. Dominic himself had worked his way up to being the number one target of the Manchester Police. He is a cross between an Italian mafia-style criminal with deeprooted connections in the community and the steely British gangster of old black & white movies, and he and his gang dress to match. However, they lack the Italian accents and their suits never seem to quite fit. They have stolen their swagger from American crime movies and have even been known to steal some of their stunts. Dominic told me about the ‘Dog’s Head’ incident, which took place when he was providing security to the Hacienda in Manchester, one of the world’s first superclubs.
‘We just went to the pub; one of my lads had a shotgun on him and I had a machete. One of the other gang-lad’s dog was about, so I just chopped its head off, carried it inside the pub, put it on the pool table and more or less asked them, or told them, to stay away from the Hacienda, or the next time it would be a human head. They never came back. The Dog’s Head was the nickname for the pub after that. Everyone used to say, “I’ll meet you down at the Dog’s Head.”’
These words were spoken matter-of-factly as if he was reading the contents on the side of a pack of cornflakes. Men who deal with their enemies in this manner have no need to impress or exaggerate: their deeds speak for them.
Dominic was one of the architects of the Strangeways riots in 1990 that resulted in two deaths, 200 injured and £50 million worth of damages, as a thousand inmates took over the prison and staged a rooftop protest that lasted days. This protest inspired others around the UK and Ireland, including one at Mountjoy Prison in Dublin. I was a young cub reporter for the Irish Press at the time and I remember ringing in my copy to the office: ‘The Strangeways choreographer is on tour,’ I told them. I didn’t know at the time that 15 years later I would be that choreographer’s new best friend.
Dominic is still a Tony Soprano-type figure in Manchester and that’s what attracted me to him as a film subject. With his strong base in the community, the racketeering business came easy to him. He took a percentage from many businesses, from car parks to pubs, and the rumour was that there were millions of pounds at his disposal.
‘How much money do you think has gone through the hands of the Noonans over the last 20 years?’ I asked him at one point.
‘Allegedly, allegedly, we’ve made £5–6 million. But where’s the money?’
‘That’s the question I’m asking. Where’s the money? Is it in property? Is it in horses?’
‘No, it’s behind the bar in landlords’ pubs.’ Dominic would never give a straight answer when a funny one would do.
‘So, even with all the money that you’ve made, you’re still out making money, you’re still active. Is that the message that’s going out?’
‘I’m still dangerous. Anyone’s dangerous, but there’s some that are really dangerous.’
‘Are you really dangerous?’
‘Yeah.’
‘And the next generation is ready and waiting?’
‘Yeah, they’re already primed. There’s about 20, but I always keep the young ones around me because they’re more loyal, more trustworthy. And I’ve got a lot of respect for them and they got a lot of respect for me. I know that they will watch my back and I will actually respect them and watch their backs, and they know I’ve had their backs many times for them.’
Dominic would travel the streets in his ex-police cars with a posse of young men, many homeless or from very difficult backgrounds. He was a kind of criminal Pied Piper of Manchester and there was no shortage of youngsters happy to dance to his tune.
‘I kno
w that they would die for me and I would die for them; they shoot for me and I shoot for them,’ he said, speaking of the loyalty they showed him.
In the community he was the gangster social worker to whom everyone brought their problems. I went with him to meet Mick, who had got himself into debt with a London gangster and found himself being threatened to pay up, or else. In desperation he had attempted to rob a corner post office, armed with just a towel wrapped round his forefinger. He had called upon Dominic for help. In his red-walled sitting room, bare except for the big sofa and obligatory widescreen TV, Dominic presided over proceedings.
‘Just for the record, what possessed you to go into a post office with no weapon and expect to walk out?’ he asked Mick.
‘Fucking stupidity, I suppose. I walked in, put the bag through the tray and said, “Put the money in the bag and don’t do anything stupid.” He went, “What?” so I repeated myself. He went, “Fuck off, poof,” and pushed the button. I was like, “Fuck” cos I’ve seen it on TV where the shutters come down and trap you. Then the shutters came down. I thought, “Fucking hell, I’m well stuck here!” I turned round, looked at the door, I could see the shutter was still slightly open, so I just fucking ran for the door and out. Bam, in my car, I was gone.’
‘Was the alarm ringing?’ Dominic wanted to know.
Hitman, Gangsters, Cannibals and Me Page 5
