Hitman, Gangsters, Cannibals and Me

by Donal Macintyre

  She was found beside the dead kidnappers. Initially, the Police believed that Eduardo had arranged for the kidnappers to be shot during the handover of the ransom. They blamed Eduardo for Paola’s death and said that the kidnappers had shot her because he tried to intervene.

  ‘I lost my head and started shouting at them and telling them where they should go. They were saying I killed my daughter. I said that they are not only stupid but also corrupt.’ At that stage he realised that the Police would not pursue the investigation. As he told me the story, he leaned forward, his hands tightly clasped in anger.

  Photographs of raven-haired Paola sit on the mantelpiece in the family’s sitting room. ‘She was a very happy girl, who always loved to play jokes. We found out she was shot with a .45 mm calibre gun. At least she died immediately,’

  Having buried his only daughter, he was determined to find the remaining kidnappers. Using all the resources he had, he set out to bring the men responsible for Paola’s murder to justice. It took him three years before he finally rounded them up.

  ‘I started collecting information on the dead kidnappers, like photographs, information about their brothers, fathers, cousins ... I knew who I was looking for and what I was looking for. I tracked down every lead. I had the leads from the dead kidnappers, of course, which gave me a head start. This was the job of the Police, but they didn’t want to know,’ he told me.

  Eduardo brought the evidence he had gathered to the Police. His determination and perseverance finally paid off, and the culprits were brought before the courts and convicted. Since then, he has been offered the opportunity to exact revenge on Paola’s killers. This is common in Mexico, but he has steadfastly refused to contaminate his daughter’s memory by sinking to that level. I’m not sure that I could I maintain such dignity, faced with what Eduardo has been through. I would almost certainly want revenge, but he is a better man than I. But Eduardo knows that the death of the kidnappers would do nothing to ease the pain in his heart.

  On the fourth Sunday of every month, he goes to the prison just to make sure that the kidnappers haven’t bribed their way to freedom. ‘I like to go to see them, just to be sure they are still there. This is Mexico after all,’ he said.

  I asked him if he felt a great satisfaction knowing that he tracked down the kidnappers and brought them to justice. ‘Well, it’s not a matter of satisfaction: it’s just justice and it’s a way of telling Paola, even if she cannot hear me, “I love you.”’

  I reflected on just how lucky I am to be able to say these simple words to my own daughters.

  With tears in his eyes and pain etched in every facial muscle, he told that for him there is no future, only a past.

  ‘Do you have children? Any daughters?’ he asked.

  ‘Yes,’ I said. ‘I have two girls.’

  I told him about my baby girl and the words she had spoken to me just a few hours previously. This was heavy stuff between complete strangers. But emotion came easily to Eduardo; he had nothing to lose and he gave me a permission of sorts to reveal my own feelings. There was a painful connection between us as we lived and relived that indescribable bond between father and daughter. As he looked into my eyes, I could see the hurt in his soul that would never heal. I could see how he carries that pain with great dignity and expresses it with true eloquence. Both overcome with emotion, we cried together and allowed the moment to happen.

  The scene of two grown men crying bewildered the production crew. But none of them had children. They weren’t daddies, and were perhaps too young to understand the tragic difference between a father’s dreams and his memories. Either out of politeness or discomfort, neither the cameraman nor the producer ever mentioned this moment after the event. But it will stay with me for the rest of my days.

  15

  BEST OF ENEMIES

  It was July 1988. In the shadow of Nottingham County Hall, an array of national flags fluttered in the breeze one hundred metres from the Trent Bridge. Behind each flag stood nervous and hungry athletes making their last minute preparations for the World Canoeing Championships. The River Trent gushed by, over-laden with rainwater.

  In the Irish team, was a very excited 22-year-old – me. The city of Nottingham is the home of the National Water Sports Centre at Holme Pierrepont, and a canoe and rowing course that I had attended since I was aged 15 and was a junior international on the Irish team.

  That day I raced to eleventh place in the world, and this city and this result came to signify the pinnacle of my canoeing career.

  Seven years later I was standing outside the Imperial Bar in Nottingham just off the main square. I spotted two friends coming down the street. Rupert and Peter were paddlers I had known for over 15 years from my days at Holme Pierrepont. They had stood on the banks of the River Trent on that windy day in 1988, supporting me in the World Championships. I am a convivial sort of chap and this chance meeting should have delighted me, but these were different times.

  I was living a different life and going by a different name. Tony Hearns was my ‘nom de guerre’ and I was dressed in an Everlast bomber jacket, black jeans, black t-shirt and black steel-capped shoes. Lee, who in his spare time sold me whizz (amphetamines), and another Tony, a grumpy Italian, shared the door with me. Had I known that he would have the same name as my undercover alias, I would have chosen a different one. Across the road my white Mitsubishi Shogun was illegally parked. There was a sports bag with a remote control microcamera strategically positioned to capture a wide shot of the nightclub entrance and us three bouncers monitoring the revellers entering the venue on this Friday night.

  Earlier that evening, the bar staff served coffee to the doormen as we arrived. Nupi, one of the bargirls, approached me and asked: ‘What will you have, Tony, tea or coffee?’

  ‘Coffee, please,’ I said.

  When she brought it to me she asked where I was from?

  ‘Here and there,’ I said. ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a media student.’

  ‘Really? What would you like to do – films, PR?’

  ‘My ambition is to work in documentaries. I’d love to work for a programme like World in Action; that’s what I’d really like to do.’

  I thought that was a little too close to home for comfort, as that was exactly who I was working for.

  ‘Really? Why would you want to do that?’ I asked, taking another sip of coffee.

  ‘That’s where they really dig deep into the story.’

  ‘Be careful what you wish for,’ I tell her. ‘It isn’t necessarily all it’s cracked up to be.’

  About eight years later Nupi and I met up again. She is a TV producer and was interviewing me for a Channel Four film she was directing. We had a good laugh about just how close she came to finding me out that day. It wasn’t funny at the time, though.

  Now I could see my canoe club buddies approaching, but thankfully they couldn’t see me – yet. They had no idea of my undercover job, but they did know that I was a journalist and they could be relied upon to say entirely the wrong thing at the wrong time: ‘Times must be hard in the world of television, Mac!’ or something equally certain to reveal that I had no business being a bouncer at a club in Nottingham.

  In front of them was a posse of about 15 women in various states of undress. Nottingham is famous for having three times more women than men. Groups of men would come from Leeds, Coventry, Derby and as far away as Liverpool and Hull to take advantage of the man deficit. This was Friday night, when women and men travelled in single-sex packs. Saturday was couples’ night and Sunday was family day.

  The small of my back was hot and sweaty against the nylon belt that held my recorder. The appearance of my two friends could spell the end of the operation. I had finally got a job on the doors after four months undercover, and had been taken under the wing of the city’s biggest drug dealer. He got me the job and his reputation was protecting me, a World in Action reporter. I was scratching the criminal underbelly of t
he city and I had forgotten that this was regatta week, when canoeists from all over Ireland and the UK converge on Nottingham. It looked like my real life was about to collide with my undercover one.

  I was not allowed to move from my post or to go inside to avoid my friends. I tried to hide my face by smoking a cigarette with my hand cupped over my mouth but I couldn’t try too hard, because odd behaviour would provoke too much interest from my fellow bouncers. Every stride my old pals took towards me was a step closer to a serious beating, or much, much worse.

  I was trying to work out if I could get across the street to my jeep in one piece if my cover was blown. I would have to get out of the city immediately. Despite having spent a great deal of time here as a youngster, I had naively failed to factor in this scenario.

  At World in Action we had all the undercover toys and gadgets but we had little idea of how to manage a long-term undercover operation in these dangerous waters. I was a rookie getting by on my enthusiasm and a lot of adrenalin. My training for this deep-infiltration role had consisted of a Police briefing and a cup of coffee with the editor. ‘Don’t get in too deep and don’t use drugs,’ was the extent of the advice I had been given.

  Rupert and Peter were coming ever closer. Rupert is a photographer and has an eye for detail. I could see him in my peripheral vision, scanning the street ahead of him. He had never seen me with a shaved head and I would be completely out of context, but I still felt sure he would recognise me at a glance.

  I tried to hide behind Lee, my fellow bouncer, but he moved and leaned his back against the wall, making him useless to me as camouflage.

  ‘Do I have Rupert’s number?’ I asked myself. In my panic I had forgotten this get-out-of-jail-free card. I took out my phone and searched through the phonebook. Nothing under Rupert; nothing under Peter. Suddenly I found Rupert’s – under ‘The Dude’, of all things. I called the number. They had stopped just 25 metres away to look in the window of restaurant. I could hear his phone ring and saw him pull it out of his pocket to answer.

  ‘Hey, what are you up to?’ he shouted into the phone. I could hear his voice carrying down the street. Then he turned around towards me. Before he had a chance to look directly at me, I dashed over to him and was ready to punch him in the smacker and explain later. Suddenly, he and Peter turned again and started walking in the opposite direction towards the market square. I breathed a sigh of relief and ended the call, pretending we had been cut off.

  ‘What the fuck was that about, Tony?’ Lee asked.

  ‘Thought he was a c**t who gave me gip last week. I was going to sort him out but he’s fucked off.’

  The greatest dangers are often the random ones that there is no preparation for. The gods were with me that day, but for how long?

  * * * * *

  ‘Would the guy with the biggest shoulders in the office please stand up?’ This was how the longest undercover operation ever conducted by a television broadcaster had begun. The editor knew I was the only bloke in the office and the only one with any kind of undercover experience: I had been volunteered in 1995 to investigate the increasing epidemic of ecstasy in clubs throughout the UK.

  ‘Have you done any security work?’

  ‘Yes,’ I fibbed.

  It sounded like a challenge that was just up my street, but I think the real reason I agreed to do it was that it was Nottingham. It had been a lucky city for me on the water and now I hoped it would hold up for me in the back streets.

  I set about building up a false background and personal life that would be appropriate to a Nottingham bouncer. To shortcut some details, I rented the identity of a very good friend of mine, Tony Hearns, who had emigrated from Ireland to the US a few years previously. I figured that he wouldn’t need it anytime soon, and he was far enough out of harm’s way if anything went drastically wrong. Tony is still in the US and I still owe him the £500 rental fee. Of course if it had been MI5 instead of ITV, I might have had an army of helpers, but this was journalism and I was very much on my own.

  It wasn’t just a case of following these bouncers and becoming friendly with them – I had to become one of them. Within a month or so I was a Shogun-driving, Marlborosmoking Irishman, apparently on the run, who might have an interest in drugs and definitely hated students. My reading habits were reassuringly tabloid and my haircut determinedly short. I adopted the uniform of bomber jacket, black jeans and tight t-shirts and attended the gym as if it were the office. The transformation was complete.

  We chose Nottingham because it was perceived as an average British city – it didn’t have the gun culture of Liverpool or Manchester, yet the violence and drug-dealing were almost as serious. The target was initially the doormen: the intelligence we had indicated that that the city’s drug lords were using the bouncers to peddle drugs.

  I joined a gym that was known to be a popular hangout for doormen and drug dealers. On one of my first days there, I approached a man for advice on bodybuilding. My task in this gym was to blend in as a stranger and to get to know the guys working in the city’s clubs and pubs. There was no shortage of bodybuilding types so I approached the most affable-looking one, thinking I’d start chatting him up, so to speak, for a bit of practice. He was bald shaven and fitted the stereotype of a bouncer: squat, heavy-set and square-shouldered.

  I took a subservient role and complimented him on his muscles and his physique. He offered to spot me for a couple of weights and gave me some bodybuilding advice. In the showers we compared each other’s muscles in the mirror and we both suggested areas of improvement. It struck me that this world had a touch of the homoerotic about it, but I kept the thought to myself. I left feeling pleased that I had had a bit of practice. I wanted to settle in and get the cylinders firing before I jumped in the deep end. My new best friend and training partner, had given me the perfect opportunity to get the lie of the land and ease myself into my new world.

  A few days later, I received a briefing from the Nottingham Drugs Squad. They gave me a rundown of the major players – characters I could expect to bump into about town. The big players were a ‘no go zone’, and I was told that on no account was I to attempt to get close to The Hardy Boys – Wayne Hardy and his brother Dean – in particular. I was told that they were serious criminals and Wayne was described as ‘a major crossborder drug trafficker’. This was big boy stuff and the detectives wanted a rookie undercover reporter to steer clear of him. My job was to get to the doormen, and we all agreed that anything else would be outside the scope of the investigation.

  They showed me a photograph of the city’s biggest kingpin.

  I smiled.

  ‘You know him?’ one of the drugs officers asked.

  ‘Yeah, that’s my new mate, Wayne,’ I told them. There were a few shocked faces around the table. The last thing the Police wanted was an undercover journalist on their patch. They had no control over me and rightly thought of me as inexperienced and as a bit of a loose cannon. Our Police contact had been under the impression that this would be a quiet foray into the world of drug-dealing doormen, but now it was developing into something very serious indeed.

  By accident I had befriended the number one target of the Nottinghamshire Constabulary. It was a bit of luck that could change my life and would certainly change Wayne’s.

  * * * * *

  My Irish accent was a blessing: no one could tell what area or class I was from. When I was asked what I did before, I’d say that I had done ‘a bit of this and that’. I dropped hints around the gym that I had worked in security, bodyguarding and that kind of thing. It was code that indicated that I was up to no good. I told Wayne that I was laying low after a bit of trouble at home in Ireland and he politely chose not to push me for details.

  Wayne took my story at face value. I wasn’t a threat to him and, as long as I didn’t intrude on his business, I never would be. For months we just hung out, had a few drinks and trained together. Intuitively, I felt that the slower I took it, the more he
would ultimately reveal. If I tried to move too quickly, I would arouse his suspicions and would immediately be excluded from the inner circle.

  So, for the first few months I didn’t discuss drugs with Wayne – in fact we spoke about anything but drugs. We talked football, girls, muscles and weights; we even discussed education.

  His daughter, Kylie, was just 14 at the time and she was struggling at school. ‘Tony, you kick with the left foot. I hear those Catholic schools are good for discipline; what do you think?’ he asked me. ‘She’s going off the rails.’

  Other times he would complain to me about snouts or grasses. Nottingham was rife with police informants and the criminal fraternity referred to it as the Whispering City.

  ‘No one could keep a secret in this town,’ Wayne would say. If only he knew who he was telling his secrets to.

  My relationship with Wayne was paying off and others were beginning to open up to me.

  ‘There’s a lot of money to be earned in this town,’ Scott, once a promising apprentice electrician, told me. ‘But it’s a whispering city, so it’s a bad city to do business in. The coppers know nothing that nobody hasn’t told them.’ He is 6 ft 1", with the obligatory cropped hair and broad shoulders. Pointing to his mouth and gesturing with his finger, he went on: ‘If everyone kept that shut, coppers wouldn’t have a fucking clue.’ I nodded in conspiratorial disillusionment. ‘It’s a terrible world where you can’t trust anyone,’ I said. Nearly inconsolable at this stage, Scott continued his rant: ‘If everyone kept their mouth shut, we would be making a lot more money.’

  But he was a small player who talked big but wielded little power. He had come to my camera-ridden little flat in one of the nicer parts of Nottingham to sell me guns and Amway products. ‘Well, it’ll cost you a whack for the 9 mm but I can throw in some really good deals on my Amway products,’ he told me, deadly serious. He was offering me gallon containers of washing-up liquid and 10 kg boxes of detergent to sweeten the deal for a 9 mm pistol. It felt like something from Monty Python.