In Braintree, Nicholls was also waiting for the money from the cannabis to start rolling in. He had supplied numerous dealers, who had been waiting for the consignment to arrive. Within a few hours, all the drugs Nicholls had for sale were gone. Pleased with himself that things had eventually worked out after several mishaps in Amsterdam, he sat back and prepared himself for a long, hard drinking session in his local pub to celebrate. Within minutes of his celebration starting, his phone began to ring.
Elsewhere in Essex, Diane became aware that Rolfe was receiving an unusually high number of phone calls. When she asked him what was going on, Rolfe told her that the calls were regarding the cannabis being of poor quality. Diane could hear people shouting down the phone and could see that Rolfe was very aggravated. Eventually, Rolfe told her that all of the cannabis was being returned because it was rubbish.
Nicholls was being told the same thing as Rolfe, although he initially refused to believe the callers. He said that he was not worried; in fact, he was pissed off. He accused the dealers of trying to rip him off. ‘You always get someone who wants to try it on,’ he later stated. ‘They buy some puff on credit, have a few joints and then try to pull one over on you by saying that it isn’t any good and they want you to cut the price.’
Nicholls began to get aggressive with the callers, but they were equally vocal. They were adamant that Nicholls had sold them ‘shit, complete unsmokable cack’. Two in particular were extremely upset and threatened to have Nicholls bashed up. Nicholls finally realised that nobody was trying to rip him off and agreed to look into it for them. His celebrations were put on hold. When he sat back to think about the numerous mishaps in Amsterdam and Harris’s attitude towards him, he realised that Harris, annoyed by his lack of professionalism, must have loaded the boxes with dud cannabis.
This was just the beginning of the firm’s troubles. Shortly before Nicholls’s trip to Amsterdam, the police had raided Club UK in south London. The whole operation was televised. There were more than 1,000 people in the club. Mark Murray’s dealers had thrown all of their pills and powders on the floor in order to escape arrest. Murray lost 800 pills in total – pills for which he had not yet paid Tucker. Already in debt, it was estimated that Murray owed Tucker approximately £20,000. Prison would have been salvation for him.
There are no financial advisers in the drug world and there are certainly no overdraft facilities. Tucker wanted his money and he wanted it immediately. He came round to my house with Rolfe and asked me where Murray was. I said I assumed that he was at home, so we all got into a car and went round to his house. His girlfriend answered the door. Rolfe pushed past her, went into the front room and asked, ‘Where’s Mark?’ She said she didn’t know. He asked if he had taken his phone with him. She said no, that he had left it at home. Rolfe picked it up, switched it on and started making calls.
Tucker was sitting on the settee next to me. He was laughing. He pointed at the television and asked the girl, ‘Are you watching this programme?’ She said no, so he ripped the plug from the wall, wrapped it round the TV set and told Rolfe to go and load it and the stereo in the car, which he did. He then told Murray’s girlfriend she was coming with us. She was very frightened and said Mark would be home soon.
‘Don’t worry about that, get in the car,’ said Tucker. We all drove round to another man’s house. Fortunately, Tucker had forgotten why he had taken Murray’s girlfriend with us, that’s if he’d ever had a reason. I think he just did it to ensure she didn’t forewarn Murray that he was looking for him. Whatever, tired of waiting, we all went home.
That night, Tucker and Rolfe returned to Murray’s flat. Tucker pulled out a huge bowie knife, grabbed Murray by the face and pressed the point into his throat. ‘I want my money, Murray,’ he said. ‘And for every week you owe me, you pay £500 on top. If I don’t get it, you’re dead.’
Murray, terrified in the knowledge Tucker was more than likely to carry out his threat and equally concerned that his debt now carried interest, contacted everybody he knew asking for financial assistance. When people learned that Tucker was Murray’s creditor, they didn’t want to know. In desperation, Murray turned to a man he had recently met on the Essex club circuit.
John Rollinson was a small-time drug dealer whom I had met once or twice when he had visited Raquels with Murray. He was a scruffy, overweight individual who worked during the day as a hairdresser. By night, he gave himself the rather grand title of ‘Gaffer’. He peddled drugs and sat in the quieter pubs telling anybody who would listen that he was not only a face in the Essex underworld, he was ‘the most dangerous man in the country’.
It was John, or Gaffer, who came to Murray’s aid. Although he didn’t have the capital to settle his debt in full, Gaffer scraped together £2,000 for Murray – a generous amount by most hairdressers’ standards. Murray, who still feared Tucker was going to damage him or worse, asked me to arrange a meeting with him at Raquels so he could pay him the cash and ask for the interest agreement to be dropped.
At the meeting, which was held upstairs in the diner, Murray pleaded with Tucker to give him more time and to drop the interest charge because he had only been able to raise two grand. ‘I will have what I owe you soon,’ he said. ‘If you don’t let me carry on dealing, I won’t be able to get the money to pay you.’
Tucker reluctantly agreed and dropped the interest clause but said Murray must purchase all of his drug supply from him and the cost would be inflated so that his debt could be paid off sooner rather than later. Unfortunately for Murray, there was another but – Tucker had recently acquired a batch of Ecstasy pills, which had been named ‘Apples’ because they had an apple motif imprinted on them. Tucker said that they were extremely strong and people who had taken them had complained of headaches. ‘The dealers can’t get rid of them once everyone knows what they’re like,’ he said. ‘Sell them.’
He took the £2,000 that Gaffer had given to Murray and handed the Apple Ecstasy pills to him. Breathing a sigh of relief as Tucker strode off, Murray felt safe for the moment. He was back in business: soon those extra-strong pills would be in the hands of his dealers and being distributed in Raquels. Soon, he thought, his troubles would all be over. Little did any of us know the firm’s dud cannabis and dodgy pills were the beginning of the end for us all.
The following Friday night, I was standing at the bar in Raquels talking to Tucker and Rolfe. The assistant manager was also with us. One of the barmaids telephoned the assistant manager and asked him to go and see her because she had a problem. Tucker and I were asked to go with him to resolve whatever it was. We went to the bar near the main dance-floor area and the barmaid told us she knew that a girl in the club was under age. She had refused to serve her and now the girl was getting stroppy. We called the girl over. She looked distressed. I asked her if she had any identification so that she could prove her age.
‘I haven’t, my purse has been stolen,’ she said.
‘I’m sorry, if you have no ID, then you will have to leave because the barmaid says she knows you and you are under age.’
The girl became very irate. ‘I’ve had my purse stolen,’ she said. ‘I showed you my ID on the way in, why are you asking for it now?’
‘You may appear to be 18, but the barmaid says you aren’t,’ I said. ‘Therefore you must show your ID or leave.’
‘I have had my purse stolen,’ she said. ‘There is £300 in it. My dad’s a policeman, I’m going to get him and you’ll all be in trouble.’
‘Look, any story you tell me, I’ve already heard,’ I replied. ‘If you haven’t any ID, you will have to leave.’
‘My dad’s a policeman,’ the girl began shouting. ‘I’ve had my purse stolen.’
‘I’m sorry, you will have to leave. If your dad is a policeman, he will understand that if you haven’t got ID we cannot let you remain here.’
Eventually, the girl left. To be honest, I couldn’t have cared less if the girl was 17 or 18. I have always judged people on the way they behave. Most 17-year-old girls who came into the club were trying to act older than they were anyway, so were usually no trouble. It was the 30-year-old men who behaved like 12 year olds that I objected to. If the barmaid hadn’t said anything, I certainly wouldn’t have asked the girl to leave.
At closing time, I was putting the chains on the fire doors and waiting for the staff to leave before going home myself when I heard a commotion. I thought somebody was being attacked, so I went to see what the problem was. I found the barmaid who had told me the girl was under age at the front door. The girl had waited outside the club to have it out with her and they had ended up fighting. I told the barmaid she had better wait inside until the girl had gone.
Half an hour later, when I was satisfied the incident was over, I went home and thought no more about it. It wasn’t until some time later that I found out the truth about what had happened. Somebody who had objected to the way the girl had been treated told me that the barmaid had stolen the girl’s purse from the toilets. The girl knew the barmaid had her purse and demanded that she return it immediately. The barmaid had then telephoned the assistant manager to say that the girl was under age so that we would eject her and the accusations would cease. Leah Betts, the girl who had her purse stolen, was rightfully upset. She had waited outside the club after being ejected. She confronted the barmaid and was assaulted. Because of this incident, Leah was barred from coming into Raquels.
Chapter 9
On Friday, 10 November, it was business as usual in Raquels. Ecstasy,
cocaine and amphetamines were being sold discreetly near the top bar. Because of his financial problems, Murray was selling the drugs himself that night. A nervous teenager sidled up to Murray and asked him if he could score. Murray nodded. The teenager, a friend of Leah Betts, held the folded notes in his hand, Murray the Ecstasy pills in his. They pretended to shake hands. Murray took the money, the teenager the pills. Leah Betts’s fate was sealed. That deal was going to end her life and change a lot of other people’s.
Unfortunately for Leah, the drugs that were purchased from Murray were the Ecstasy pills with the apple motif that had come from Tucker. The following night in her father’s home, Leah, against the advice of her closest friend who had been given a warning about the strength of these particular pills, took one, thinking it was going to give her the best night of her short life.
On Monday, 13 November, I was filling up my car with petrol at a garage. I was thinking about Christmas, of all things: 1995 had been a bad year for the firm and myself. Once Christmas was out of the way, I could concentrate on the New Year – a fresh start and hopefully a new beginning. As I walked to the garage kiosk, I glanced at the news-stand. Every paper had a picture of a girl on the front page. Her eyes were closed, her mouth slack, agape, and there were tubes everywhere. I picked up a tabloid out of curiosity and paid for the petrol. I looked at the picture and thought to myself, ‘What a waste.’ I turned the page and a picture of Raquels leapt out at me. The article said an 18-year-old girl named Leah Betts was on a life-support machine after taking an Ecstasy pill that had been purchased in Raquels. My heart sank. I knew this was going to cause serious grief.
When I got home, I sat on the stairs and put my head in my hands. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew I had to do something, as it was more than a possibility that the police would want to talk to me, along with Murray, Tucker, Tate, Rolfe and all of the other members of the firm. In the end, I rang Murray, but his phone was unobtainable. I tried ringing Tucker, Tate and Rolfe but, like Murray, they had obviously heard the news and gone to ground.
Despite the problems we were now all undoubtedly going to be facing, Tate continued to rampage through Essex, drawing unwanted attention to everyone connected to the firm. He was desperately trying to locate Darren Nicholls over the dud cannabis. Tate was seething with rage and swearing bloody revenge. He rang Mick Steele, whom he knew could contact Nicholls, and explained the situation: either Nicholls pays back the money or he suffers an unimaginable death.
Steele didn’t believe Nicholls would have the bottle to deliberately give Tate dud cannabis. ‘Fuck me, Pat,’ he said. ‘You know what Nicholls is like, he was full of himself in prison, but he wouldn’t rob you, he’s shit scared of you.’
Tate would not accept this and continued to rant about killing Nicholls. Eventually, Steele said he would contact Nicholls to try and resolve the problem. When he got hold of him, Nicholls told Steele that he had spoken to the dealer in Amsterdam and after explaining that the dud drugs had been purchased by a firm of ‘very heavy Essex villains’ the dealer had offered to return the money on the condition the drugs were returned to him. Nicholls had agreed. Steele explained this to Tate over the telephone. Tate, forever suspicious, insisted Steele meet him so that he could ensure Nicholls was not trying to pull ‘another stroke’. They met at the Carpenters Arms pub near Basildon, where Tate said he would pay Steele £2,000 if he would ‘chaperone’ Nicholls on the trip back to Amsterdam to recover the syndicate’s money. Rather foolishly but with good intent, Steele agreed.
Nicholls, concerned he might get caught in possession of such a large amount of cannabis, albeit dud, decided to purchase a cheap car in which to keep the drugs. He bought a red Mark 2 Granada, loaded it with the drugs and left it in a pub car park in a village called Great Sailing in Essex.
Nicholls breathed a sigh of relief when he heard from Steele that an agreement had been reached with Tate. Nicholls truly believed that everything was going to be OK once he had returned Tate’s money. What he did not know was that Tate had decided to rip him off in revenge for supplying the dud cannabis. Unbeknown to Nicholls, one third of the cannabis shipment had been good. Tate had sold this third for £80,000 and smashed up each block of the poor quality cannabis so that when the drugs were returned to Nicholls, he would be unable to count the cannabis bars and realise some were missing.