Backstory Page 11
“Deadlight.”
I could hear the quiet excitement in Simon’s voice. He was right. It was perfect.
Six
2003 was the year of the Iraq War, the moment when Bush and Blair conned their respective nations into a lightning risk-free campaign that was to set the Iraqis free and light a torch for democracy across the Middle East. It wouldn’t quite work out that way, as two million of us tried to point out on an icy Saturday afternoon in central London, but neither Bush nor Blair was listening. That march, and all the other demos that followed, were to feature in some small way in the next book but for the time being I had another pre-occupation. Bazza Mackenzie.
Mackenzie had already appeared in the margins of Angels Passing and Deadlight, partly because he controlled the Pompey cocaine trade, and partly because of his high-profile mistress, Misty Gallagher. Bazza had prospered from the huge mark-ups that came from dealing in the laughing powder, and had so far been my response to a growing realisation that a lot of Pompey crime was rooted in the drugs biz. In Deadlight, it was Bazza who ordered the savage punishment beating of a young Somerstown scrote called Darren Geech and at the time this brief flicker of ultra-violence seemed totally in keeping with what I knew of the darker side of Pompey. The real-life Bazzas, I was told, were tribal in their loyalty to each other. They ran the tightest of ships, scored oodles of moolah, and were rapidly turning themselves into a full-scale business empire.
By now, my relationship with Andy Harrington and John Ashworth had deepened. They liked what I was doing with the books and they enjoyed the evenings we got together over a curry and a pint or two. And as it turned out, they both shared a determination to give the real-life Bazza’s tree a bit of a shake.
For Andy in particular, this mission was starting to look like a crusade. His sharp-end experience with these guys extended way back, deep into the eighties, when Bazza and his mates had been hard-core members of the 6.57, a bunch of football hooligans who exported serious violence to the four corners of the kingdom on weekends when Pompey were playing away. Outings to Birmingham, Millwall, West Ham and Bristol City, he said, had offered reliable opportunities for a decent ruck but had also wised them up to something else. With the rave culture at full throttle, the appetite for ecstasy and a number of other party drugs was enormous. Bazza could score industrial quantities of this stuff through informal networks of fellow hooligans. With the market expanding at the speed of light, there was serious money to be made.
Andy had a mate, a fellow detective called Norman Feerick. On a dark night, Norman could easily pass for Paul Winter – portly, balding, suede car coat, gallons of after-shave – and in a moment of cheerful despair he once told me the secret that lay behind the latest generation of top Pompey faces. “We’re not particularly good at three-card tricks…” he said, “…but these guys were brought up on them. To them, scams are second nature. At school, they’d nick other kids’ lunches, save their own dinner money, buy or thieve a five quid tin of biscuits, then flog it for a tenner. Believe me, there’s a whole lifetime in those sums. And that’s all it is. Just arithmetic.”
And so it was. When the all-night rave scene began to falter, Bazza and his mates moved smoothly on to cocaine. The arithmetic, as Norman put it, was compelling. Bazza could source top-quality Peruvian flake, 95% pure, from Aruba (in the Dutch Antilles) for £1,500. Exactly the same money - £1,500 – would buy a Pompey courier, often ex 6.57, to bring the toot back across the Atlantic. The flights were routed via Schipol (Amsterdam), and the coke-laden luggage was ticketed through to Heathrow where baggage handlers on the Bazza payroll knew exactly what to look for. Safely arrived in Pompey, the cocaine was cut with various substances and then distributed to wholesalers across the city (and beyond) who’d be happy to pay £25,000 a kilo. By the time the toot reached the street, said Andy, the city’s 3,500 regular users were paying the equivalent of £80,000 per kilo. The mark-ups were breathtaking. As a retail model, it put John Lewis in the shade. Bazza and his mates were rapidly becoming extremely rich.
Over several evenings, Andy gave me an extended seminar on what happened next and it was at this point that I began to pick up the faintest scent of a serious obsession. What drove Andy was anger. He knew these guys personally. Over the years he’d nicked some of them for petty offences, mostly involving drink and violence. He’d watched them ride the drugs wave out of the Eighties and he’d known exactly where all that Pompey-style free enterprise would take them. The city, in his view, was perfect for the likes of Bazza: busy, tribal, inward-looking, easy to control. In the shape of the 200 guys who formed the core of the 6.57, he had the makings of a private army, and a booming night-time economy gave him the market of his dreams. That Bazza should find himself looking at shed loads of money was utterly predictable. Yet, in Andy’s view, his bosses at Hantspol headquarters had looked on and done nothing.
Why? Andy shrugged. He’d obviously been faced with this question before. It was partly, he said, the curse of the dreaded Performance Indicators. A serious assault on the drugs supply biz wouldn’t feature on the PI stats, and given the huge resources potentially involved it was easier to chuck Bazza and his mates into the “too-difficult” basket. The other problem was legislation. Between them, the Drugs Trafficking Act (DTA) and the Criminal Justice Act (CJA) offered ample opportunities to attack the upper echelons of the supply network. A new piece of law, the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA), was about to be enacted, embodying elements of the DTA and the CJA. Andy had studied it in detail. Properly used, he was certain it could attack the likes of Bazza where it really hurt, in his pocket, yet the suits at headquarters still didn’t seem that interested. “They think it’s all too complicated,” Andy said. “And you know what? It isn’t.”
Our conversations continued over the days that followed. We’d meet in a pub called The Pembroke in Old Portsmouth. They did a fine midday roast and Andy especially admired their take on mashed swede. Tucked up at a corner table with a fine view of the fish tank, he’d analyse the way the local supply networks operated, and where Bazza would be at his most vulnerable. Some of this stuff I’d already picked up from conversations with a D/S from the Hantspol Financial Investigation Unit, but Andy added detail to the flow chart which made it all the tastier. He was far too canny to give me names, or confirm or deny whatever current hunch I was trying to push, but using other non-police contacts it wasn’t hard to work out who were the guys running the narcotics scene in the local area. These were people I knew through mates, or mates of mates. They had addresses, families, kids. They’d been around for yonks and some still turned out for a canter in the Sunday morning football leagues. Pompey really was that small.
Bazza’s biggest challenge, said Andy, was the money. Cocaine generated huge profits and somehow he had to wash all that money and turn it into legitimate income that would satisfy the tax man. The classic model, adopted world-wide, called for a three stage process: first “placement”, then “layering”, then “integration”. Because I didn’t have a degree in Business Studies this was a bit beyond me but in essence it seemed to boil down to the wash/spin/dry cycle. Andy nodded. Dead right.
“You’re Bazza, OK? You’ve got piles of dosh everywhere. You’ve got more than you can possibly cope with. So you start to invest it. You start buying properties through dodgy solicitors. You bung millions through their client accounts and some finds its way into mortgages, or goes to various nominees, or whatever. You end up owning whole streets of houses so you fill them full of benefit-claimants and asylum seekers and all sorts and then you start investing in businesses. You buy a failing a café-bar. You tart the place up, give it some fancy theme, have a big opening, do the biz. Then you get interested in tanning salons, or pubs, or a big fat stake in some taxi firm, or an estate agency, or a care home, or property overseas, or even a hotel. Anything that will generate legit profits. Anything that will put you at arm’s length from the laughing powder.”
I knew some of these places. I’d drunk in these pubs, eaten in these restaurants, gazed at properties in the estate agent’s window, taken a taxi or two from the firm that was allegedly half Bazza’s. In every case, the experience had been fine and when it came to the hotel, the place was a huge improvement on what had come before. Were all these makeovers down to Class A narcotics? If so, then Pompey’s top face had become a one-man regeneration agency: the guy who could do you a nice urban refurb without any of the paperwork.
Andy laughed He’d never heard it quite put that way before but in essence, I was right. A lot of the good stuff that was happening on my doorstep was down to the laughing powder.
This, of course, raises a problem or two. Take Bazza off the plot, and what happens to all that recycled dosh? This was a question that struck Andy as deeply ironic but the irony didn’t end there. For months, from other CID contacts, I’d been picking up rumours of a turf-grab by visiting Scouse dealers, determined to pitch camp in Pompey and help themselves to a big fat slice of Bazza’s profits. These were guys who were happy to enforce a debt or settle an argument with a jugful of boiling water laced with sugar, or the flat part of a hot iron. The Men in Blue had done their best to disrupt the Scousers and run them out of town but in the end – according to the accounts I’d heard – it was Bazza who’d sorted them out. Their lack of manners had offended him. His business model had no room for interlopers. These two-bob Irish tossers were trespassing. End of.
Was this true? And if it was, shouldn’t we all be grateful for Bazza keeping the peace? Andy thought that was funny, as well as true, but from where he was sitting there was something infinitely more important than flash café-bars or low-life turf wars. “Think youth”, he said. “This city’s full of young kids who see the likes of Bazza, see what he’s driving, clock that big flash motor cruiser of his, all the other toys. They want some of that. They admire the guy. He’s become a sort of role model, a kind of hero-figure. Is that what we really want? At this rate, the guy’s gonna end up Lord fucking Mayor.”
Great idea. I made a note. Andy and I settled up for the curry and agreed to continue the conversation later. A lawyer was coming down from London to address the troops about the investigative potential of the imminent Proceeds of Crime Act. I was welcome to come along and listen.
A lot of the POCA lecture, to be frank, went over my head but the following week, I met John Ashworth in his office for a catch-up. He was nursing a boxful of Kleenex and had a streaming cold. John, I suspected, was developing some kind of long-term operation against the Pompey supply networks, probably in collaboration with Andy, though neither of them would confirm it. By now I’d trawled though the rest of my notes, a record of dozens of related conversations, and thought I could put together the bones of an operation for myself.
John was braced for yet more questions.
“You’re thinking court from the off, am I right?”
“Obviously.”
“Fraud is where the dirty money hits the system. That’s your point of entry. That’s where you go in.”
“No comment.”
“You keep it tight. Really tight. Handful of blokes. No more.”
“No comment.”
“You operate from secured premises. Somewhere seriously off-piste.”
“No comment.”
“You select a specific target and never give up.”
“No comment.”
“You use the legislation. You want to bankrupt this guy.”
“No comment.”
“So you select a specific transaction, evidence where the money came from, establish that everything downstream, every penny of income, is tainted – then let the confiscation procedures kick in.”
“No comment.”
“And maybe you do something else. Hook the guy. Tempt him. Play on his vanity. Stitch him up.”
“Some kind of sting you mean?” John reached for another Kleenex. “No comment.”
We studied each other for a long moment. Then John got to his feet and looked out of the window. He always kept his voice low. Especially on occasions like this.
“What you’ve got to remember is that these guys are really tight with each other,” he murmured. “They’ve been mates forever. They’re all Pompey. They’ve played football together, they’ve fought rival fans together, they’ve shared flats, girlfriends, the lot. So unless you’re Pompey too, you’ll never get anywhere near them. That’s why there aren’t any real informants to speak of. And that’s why these guys know no fear.”
Know no fear. Bazza was starting to sound like a grown-up version of Doodie. This sounded deeply promising but John hadn’t finished.
“You know something else? This city is totally corrupt. The money goes everywhere. It taints everything. You wouldn’t believe it. And with the money goes Bazza. Think football. Think politicians. Solicitors. Accountants. Developers. Planners. Suppliers. Crown Court. Magistrates Court. Everywhere. You have to be so bloody careful who you’re talking to and you know why? Because so many of these people know the guy, because it all goes straight back to Bazza. It’s that kind of city. Really tight.”
I nodded. I’d heard exactly the same from Andy only days ago. “Even us…” he said. “…even within the police. The man has ears everywhere.”
There are moments in the kind of stories I write when you can hear the pieces slipping into place. This was one of them. I reached for my pad.
By late spring, with George Bush proclaiming victory in Iraq, I was pretty confidant I’d got Bazza taped. This guy would be an amalgam of all the research I’d so carefully culled from my contacts in and out of the police. He’d be Pompey born and bred. He’d be mad about football. He’d be small, shrewd, volatile, and deeply cunning. He’d love a fight (“foyte”) and have no time for losers. He’d be nerveless in situations that would scare most of us shitless and he’d have acquired a lifelong partner in the shape of Marie, a beautiful High School rebel from the other side of the tracks.
My Bazza would have been one of the 6.57 who set out to plunder shopping malls and wreck café bars all over Europe. He’d have a taste for sharp suits, expensive motor cars, and extreme violence. At the same time, he’d be shrewd enough to employ exactly the right kind of white collar advice – solicitors, accountants – to keep the Men in Blue at arm’s length. By the opening of Book Five, he’d be living in a five bed-roomed spread in an area of Southsea called Craneswater. Craneswater is the closest Pompey comes to posh.
So far so good. But to make the plot work I had to find a chink in Bazza’s armour, a weakness that would offer the Andy Harringtons and John Ashworths of this world just a glimmer of hope that they might be able to put him away. Given the guy I’d created, that weakness had to be vanity, or maybe vaulting ambition. Bazza thinks of himself as Mr Pompey. If the city belongs to anyone it belongs to him. In the small hours, with Marie asleep beside him, he’ll be dreaming of the big one, the huge fuck-off gesture, the big splashy purchase that will confirm his place at the very top of the Pompey heap. I’d started off by creating the Prince of the City. What I needed now was a coronation.
For a day or two I thought of one of the big seafront hotels. Then I found myself toying with Bazza making a bid for South Parade Pier. He could install a casino, perfect for the washing of yet more money. He could tart the place up and hold regular boxing evenings, occasions with a bit of class, a rich Pompey mix of money, booze and lashings of violence. I floated the idea past Andy Harrington who pointed out that evenings like these were already a fact of life, attracting an interesting mix of police officers, freemasons, and top faces from the Pompey underworld. I thanked him for the intel and struck the Pier off my Bazza wish-list. I could upgrade the boxing to cage-fighting but there was already a staleness to the idea. Bazza, my Bazza, followed in no one’s footsteps but his own.
Then, on a long mornin
g run along the seafront, I found myself looking seaward at the closest of the three forts out in the Solent. These had been built in the nineteenth century to provide interlocking fire in the event of an attack on the naval dockyard by the French. There were more fortifications to the north of the city, cut deep into the crest of Portsdown Hill, and the ring of fire extended to the west on the Gosport side of the harbour. Whatever plans Napoleon III might have for Pompey, the city would remain beyond reach. This struck me as a serviceable metaphor for Bazza himself, the Pompey villain who’d made himself impregnable, and the plot implications were only too tempting. What if Spitbank Fort was up for sale? What if Bazza decided to put a bid in? And what if he was silly enough to pay for it with unwashed – or semi-washed – drugs money?
The more I thought about the idea, the better I liked it. It had a lot of Bazza’s trademark boldness. It was the kind of stunt – highly public, impossible to ignore – that he’d adore. Plus an offshore casino would give him the perfect excuse for a succession of wild parties. I started thinking about a helipad, five star accommodations, fine dining, fashion shows and photo-shoots for the glitterati down from London. If Mr Pompey wanted to put himself and his city on the map, then here was his chance.
Faraday’s job, of course, would be to cast the bait and manipulate the sale in such a way that Bazza ended up taking a risk too far and landing himself well and truly in the shit. This would require a great deal of guile and patience on Faraday’s part, and on the part of the senior officer bossing the sting. I had a shrewd idea that Andy and John were up to something faintly similar but faced with a total lack of corroboration it was down to me to invent the whole thing. Writers adore a challenge like this. What other job in life pays you to fib for a living?